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How long does it take to decrypt a hard drive?
My work laptop has Dell Encryption 10.9.0.1 Enterprise Edition installed. My C: drive, the only drive on this laptop, is 235 GB and 80GB free. I have 154 GB of operating system, programs, and data on C: drive. I assume all 154 GB is encrypted.
My workplace is moving away from DDPE and going to BitLocker. Service Desk says it is faster to reimage the laptop rather than remove DDPE. Does it take really long to decrypt a hard drive and uninstall DDPE?
Any estimate how long it would take to decrypt my hard drive?
Laptop specs
- Dell Latitude 5590
- 32GB Ram
- Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz, 2112 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s).
- Model PC601 NVMe SK hynix 256GB
It worries me that my help desk makes it sound like it will take a day to decrypt and remove DDPE from my laptop. Sounds crazy to me so figured I would ask here if that is the experience people have.
Thanks.
SteveO1683
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January 11th, 2022 13:00
Hi @enriquejp,
Typically the Dell Encryption product will decrypt \ encrypt data at a rate of 60 GBs per hour. From your used space your machine should decrypt easily within a business days however there can be locked system that are in use at the time of decryption that we cannot get to, for those files we list to decrypt them at the next system start. It can take a few boot \ reboot cycles for the system to be entirely decrypted that could be the situation your IT Admins are trying to avoid.
Dell Encryption and Bitlocker can co-exist on a machine. If your administrators are interesting in learning more about that configuration as you move from Dell Encryption they can call into our dedicated call queue and we'll be happy to help.
enriquejp
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January 11th, 2022 20:00
Can I continue to use my laptop while the data is decrypting? I understand it has to reboot a few times to decrypt all the data. Or maybe it is better to not use it at all and give all the laptop’s power and throughout to decrypting at 60GBs/hour?
Is the whole disk encrypted (i.e. all 256 GBs)? Or only the 154GB of data?
SteveO1683
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January 12th, 2022 08:00
Hi @enriquejp,
The amount of data encrypted differs via an organizations policy but typically parts of the OS critical file system are encrypted and user generated data is encrypted. So the whole 256GBs isn't but a good chunk of your 154GB probably is. To get an exact amount of encrypted files \ data bytes you can click Start > Run and type WSScan. You may get a prompt that you're not an administrator and that is ok. Click the Search button and this will scan all your files and let you know how many are encrypted and the total size of all encrypted data.
Decryption can happen as you use the machine or while the machine is just sitting at a Windows logon page. If you happen to be using a file that's encrypted and we need to decrypt it we simply add that file to a list of files that are locked and come back to it on another decryption pass.
aergadrgdsfg
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March 23rd, 2023 09:00
@SteveO1683How do I see the deinstallation has been successful?
The description of the service just says "Dell Encryption Removal Agent []" and the "SDE Monitor service" is still running when looking at the task manager. When using "WSScan" I see that there are no more encrypted files.
Shouldn't the software be disabled and completely removed from my laptop after the operation is complete?
aergadrgdsfg
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March 23rd, 2023 11:00
Found a solution: The status message can take up some time to appear (15-30min) and multiple restarts might be needed. This is the case even when WSScan does not find encrypted files anymore.
The service and the task will disappear when the software is fully uninstalled.