FEATURE REQUEST: Support for Hybrid dual drive configuration

Products

• Drive Encryption

Issue/Introduction

Currently Symantec Drive Encryption does not work properly with systems that come with a Hybrid dual-drive configuration.

This configuration is not using single-drive hybrid drives, but two physical drives.  One separate SSD drive is used with one separate spinning disk drive with either operating system software, or third-party software.  This dual-drive configuration is combined for increased performance.

One such type of implementation is using FCM (flash cache modules) to combine a separate SSD (usually an mSATA SSD module) and a spinning disk Hard drive. These use the Intel Smart Response Technology to combine the drives and optimize speed caching frequently accessed file on the SSD portion of the drive. This allows for optimal performance

Upon attempting to encrypt the drive with Symantec Drive Encryption, the following error is observed:

 "This disk does not appear to have a valid volume. Symantec Drive Encryption can only encrypt disks with at least one valid volume"

Resolution

Symantec Corporation is committed to product quality and satisfied customers. This Feature Request is currently being considered by Symantec Corporation to be addressed in a forthcoming version of the product.
Technical Support filed a Feature Request to add this product feature.

Note: A feature request is exactly that, a request. There is no committed date for this request from the Symantec Encryption Product Management team, nor from the Symantec Encryption Engineering team at this time.
Please be sure to refer back to this document periodically as any changes to the status of the request will be reflected here.

Applies To

Known systems using this dual-drive hybrid technology are:

HP ENVY Sleekbook 4
HP EliteBook 820 G1
HP EliteBook 840 G1
HP EliteBook 850 G1

Windows 64-bit and 32-bit are both affected by this issue.