HP 840 G4 - NVME SSD - BIOS ATA Password Support or Bitlocker Hardware Encryption Support

[tech_dev]

Dear community,
I have following task: I want to use the build in hardware encryption of a SSD with hardware encryption support.

Notebook: HP Elitebook 840 G4
SSD: NVME M.2 PCIe Samsung 970 PRO 1TB

Following encryption possibilites are supported by the SSD:

class0: works with bios ATA password and ATA security, for NVME drives the UEFI firmware must implement the UEFI ATA Pass-through protocol or the UEFI Security Command Protocol

TCG Opal: Winmagic SecureDoc oder SedUtil is necessary for encryption.

eDrive IEEE-1667: This is used for bitlocker hardware encryption with windows 10. But the UEFI must support this.

Problem Description:

The UEFI of the 840 G4 supports neither the Bios ATA Password method for NVME drives (Drivelock) nor the bitlocker hardware encryption. Same companies like Lenovo have already updated the UEFI of their newer machines to support this. E.g. the Thinkpad T480s supports both Bios Password and bitlocker hardware encryption for NVME drives.

I have a strict specification for a full disk encryption which can be done at best with a Bios ATA Password, bitlocker with hardware encryption whould be my second choice.

Is HP planning to update the UEFI firmware of the 840 G4 to support both or one of both: Bios ATA password (Drivelock) and bitlocker for NVME drives?

Thank you very much for all of your help.

[tech_dev]

I think, HP is avoiding this problem. The two other threads with the same questions have been locked due to inactivity. But in one thread there was a activity shortly before (my post):

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-and-Recovery/HP-Slice-Bitlocker-hardware-enc...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-Notebooks/Can-t-use-bitlocker-Hardware-Encryption-with-970-EV...

Why is this simple question not answered? Lenovo has already delivered a solution to its customers. It's a little bit sad, that an expensive business machine doesn't support important encryption possibilities.

[cmiguel]

Hi,

I would also like HP to have an answer for this.

Have you tried to use the chat option in the support page?

[td101]

actually HP had contacted me a while ago with a non-helping message:

[tech_dev]

Another interesting thread with the same discussion, here a HP ZBook G5 with the same problem:

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Memory-Storage/HOW-TO-MANAGE-ENCRYPTION-OF-960-PRO/m-p/320455/hi...

As long as HP doesn't tell us, which machines don’t properly support UEFI 2.3.1 or the EFI_STORAGE_SECURITY_COMMAND_PROTOCOL, we have to use WinMagic SecureDoc and TCG Opal 2.

See this thread at point 28:

http://www.ckode.dk/desktop-machines/how-to-enable-windows-edrive-encryption-for-ssds/