How to format my encrypted HDD?

I can only speak out of experience regarding Bitlocker, but you don't even need to use disk part if you're reinstalling the OS. During the drive/partition management step of the OS install you can easily format a bitlocked drive. If it's just a storage drive, hkhan's suggestion will do the trick.

Unless the drive itself has security, then yes. As long as you can access the whole drive (encrypted or not) from your OS, you can format it.

Unless I'm mistaken, most Unix-based partition management programs won't care if a drive is encrypted and you want to reformat it. They tend to trust the user more, so long as you use the right terminal commands.

m4a4 said:

Unless the drive itself has security, then yes. As long as you can access the whole drive (encrypted or not) from your OS, you can format it.

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The point of deleting the partition is to deactivate all protection and bypass encryption altogether :grin:

Encryption is still just data on the drive, that can be wiped. The point of encryption is that the data is not usable, not that it's protected from being overridden.

Why even ask this question? Just try it!

OutlawCecil said:

Encryption is still just data on the drive, that can be wiped. The point of encryption is that the data is not usable, not that it's protected from being overridden.

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Drive level encryption requires the key to access the drive at all. The drive is effectively bricked without it. Laptops BIOS generally allows access to this feature. Many desktop boards do not expose that feature.

That means a drive level encrypted drive moved into a desktop without support with the feature means you can't use the drive without removing the password first.

I'd have said that you simply could delete the partition and then recreate it - voila and no need to struggle with reformatting.
Update - I just tried it and I was correct. I created a new partition, bitlocked it, rebooted and it was locked. I then deleted the partition whilst it was locked and recreated it and it's not locked (obviously!)

trgz said:

I'd have said that you simply could delete the partition and then recreate it - voila and no need to struggle with reformatting.
Update - I just tried it and I was correct. I created a new partition, bitlocked it, rebooted and it was locked. I then deleted the partition whilst it was locked and recreated it and it's not locked (obviously!)

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That's software encryption not hardware encryption.

Samsung for example supports BIOS level encryption but they also allow you to Secure Erase to recover the drive. This is not necessarily typical and I wouldn't expect this to work for a HDD for example.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/M2M/html/support/faqs_03.html

Some systems or BIOS may not support this feature.
. How to set up AES encryption
- In BIOS, Security > Password on boot > HDD Password (※May differ depending on the BIOS)
. The encryption key set for the AES is stored in the NAND of the SSD. If the key is lost, you can only reset the encryption key by performing a Secure Erase.
If you do so, all existing data will be lost.

Darth Shiv said:

That's software encryption not hardware encryption.

Samsung for example supports BIOS level encryption but they also allow you to Secure Erase to recover the drive. This is not necessarily typical and I wouldn't expect this to work for a HDD for example.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/M2M/html/support/faqs_03.html

Some systems or BIOS may not support this feature.
. How to set up AES encryption
- In BIOS, Security > Password on boot > HDD Password (※May differ depending on the BIOS)
. The encryption key set for the AES is stored in the NAND of the SSD. If the key is lost, you can only reset the encryption key by performing a Secure Erase.
If you do so, all existing data will be lost.

Click to expand...

Sound point, though the OP doesn't go into detail as to what level and most other comments above are re Bitlocker

The problem is that windows don`t this disk, it`s externdisk