I don't see how the built-in encryption is useful to anyone. It's not auditable:...

snaky · on April 9, 2013

Hmm. I think ability to do the following would be nice: boot from Linux LiveCD, copy (dd) whole disk to another ssd/hdd (with no hardware encryption), plug in the second one into Windows 8 system, check the settings (AES/256), enter BitLocker password (or/and insert USB flash with keyfile etc.), get your data.

sliverstorm · on April 10, 2013

Presumably it either does or doesn't work. I can't imagine you could configure it wrong. Presumably somebody will probably put it to the test.

So, once somebody tests it out, you can be pretty confident it is working.

Hardly a good only line of defense for extremely sensitive data, but a nice addition to a long chain of defense for moderately sensitive data without a big performance penalty.

bcoates · on April 9, 2013

Are there no low-level commands to access the stored cyphertext?

wmf · on April 9, 2013

AFAIK no. If the drive hasn't been unlocked with the proper keys it just refuses any reads/writes.

snaky · on April 10, 2013

If that so, how could you boot from such drive?

Stratoscope · on April 10, 2013

You have to enter the hard drive password when you boot.

On my ThinkPads, I set the power-on password and the hard drive passwords all the same. Then I enter the power-on password and it feeds that password to all the hard drives too. (I have three SSDs in my W520.)