What are the known limitations on using SecureDoc with Windows 7 and SED/OPAL NVME drives
Issue:
It's been observed that when Installing SecureDoc on Windows 7 with OPAL NVME, it only performs Software Encryption, or encryption of any sort isn't possible.
Environment
Affected OS: Windows 7 (x86 /x64) / Windows 2008 R2 SP1
Variety of Devices (Lenovo,Dell,HP,Samsung etc.)
OPAL NVME hard drives
BIOS: Legacy or UEFI
Root Cause
NVME driver support was not added until Windows 8.1 and later was enhanced in Windows 10.
Microsoft has released driver support for Read\Write capabilities in Windows 7 however, this driver does not have advanced protocols to perform any firmware upgrades and calls for OPAL activation. Please refer to Microsoft Article ID: 2990941 for instructions on how to obtain the driver update.
We have also had occasions where software encryption of NVME drives on Windows 7 may not work at all. Or not without a fair amount work in terms of configuring a profile that would support such a configuration.
Proposed Solution:
In consideration of this support limitation, our recommendation for properly supporting NVME with SED/OPAL encryption would require that you configure setup using Windows 10 or higher and ensure UEFI BIOS is using 2.3.1 or newer version. If you choose to utilize Windows 7 with NVME drives and require support from WinMagic, it would be on a best effort basis.