We looked everywhere in WD's website and SN850X documentation, but nowhere could we find any information about support for hardware-encryption on this drive.
Generally speaking, when a manufacturer does not advertise a feature, that means that such product does not have/support that feature.
Also, nowhere in any review of the SN850X - not on TH and not elswhere - could we find any mention about hardware-encryption on this drive.
However, the photograph posted of the SN850X on TH's review (and on some other websites as well) clearly shows "PSID: ...." which is the ID used to revert an hardware-encrypted drive back to (unencrypted) factory default.
Can someone that owns this drive please confirm whether or not this drive supports hardware-encryption?
If so, what are the hardware-encryption standards that it supports:
SED/OPAL2 only?
SED/OPAL2 + IEEE1667/eDrive?
IEEE1667/eDrive only?
Also, please point us to any official documentation that proves that hardware-encryption is supported on the SN850X.
this is a very confusing issue.
WD in general has the software for OPAL support. regarding this series, there are many reviews (like tomshw's) that clearly state that the device does not support encryption.
however, the current specsheet on WD's site says it implements OPAL 2.01:
https://documents.westerndigital.co...k-ssd/data-sheet-wd-black-sn850x-nvme-ssd.pdf
and AFAIK, OPAL
requires AES 128 or 256 encryption.
also, as you noted, there's a PSID on the sticker. (but PSIDs could be used to unlock non-encrypted drives that use a plain old password lock.)
also, there is this bit of info:
https://kcm.trellix.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB81136
which contains this changelog:
| December 9, 2022 | Added the following Western Digital SN850X firmware and models:
Firmware 620311WD for WD BLACK SN850X 1000GB and WD BLACK SN850X 2000GB
Firmware 624311WD for WD BLACK SN850X 4000GB |
this comes from a company that provides a FDE solution that works with OPAL drives... they should know i guess.
so it looks like maybe:
- SN850 does not support encryption.
- SN850X launched without encryption, but later was provided with firmware updates that make it OPAL compatible.
- reviewers got the early firmware and reported no encryption, and never noticed the later change.
- performance testing by early reviews might not reflect the performance of the drive if it is encrypted and all testing should be redone.
- this drive might be a strange SED: early devices launched "without encryption" might really not be encrypted. this would mean that there is no MEK (media encryption key) to encrypt with the KEK (key encryption key) when you want to add a password to it. maybe you need to secure erase the drive once in order to generate a MEK and start encrypting. (and maybe then it might significantly slow down.)
so buying this drive at this point is a very dangerous proposition.
on top of all this, WD is cannot be considered a serious player in the storage field. they generally never provide FW updates for the rotating rusts, but they do provide FW updates for SSDs. but check this out: they provide no changelogs. believe it or not, WD expect users to go through the risk of flashing a FW update on their SSDs, with the implicit risk of loosing not just the SSD but all their data, but won't even reveal to users what issues that FW is supposed to fix. this is their OFFICIAL position; it is beyond insane. you can read stories of people wrestling WD online to try to get FW changelogs from them and them saying: NO!
this obviously points to a corporate culture of covering up issues to avoid liability, while the safety and privacy of their customer's data is on the line. there is really no other believable reason for not disclosing FW changelogs.
before knowing of the FW secrecy issue, i'd contacted WD pre sales asking about encryption on the SN850X, citing many reviews saying it doesn't encrypt and pointing to their conflicting datasheet mentioning OPAL. i received the ghosting treatment from WD, no reply... nice. later i found that info regarding certain FWs encrypting, so the road was easy: just get the FW update, read the changelog, find out if OPAL was added in it. yeah... that didn't play out nicely either.
as i said, WD cannot be considered a serious company. just avoid it, forever.
what to buy? well the samsung parts are complete crap: very slow or very expensive, and dying really fast (though some older parts seem to be saved by a FW upgrade done early enough).
and there's the hynix platinum P41. reviews all say it is 256-bit AES encrypted, but the official info i've read is that they are Pyrite, not OPAL nor OPALite. pyrite does not actually mean non-encrypting, but why would you make en encrypting drive pyrite instead of opalite? pyrite requires a password lock without any encryption, just sham "security". is the P41 encrypted as they say? i doubt it. i've personally interacted with the drive and requested an nvme format with encryption security level, and the drive responded it couldn't do it. if i lowered the level to simply TRIM everything, it happily complied. my take: the P41 is not encrypted, cannot sanitize, will reply "won't do" when asked to do something that requires encryption, and specs say it is PYRITE compliant. why tomshardware says it's encrypted? who knows. it very much looks like it isn't.
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