File Share Encryption

Symantec Disk Encyption refuses to see my 4tb external HDD.  Maybe its a coincidence, but its GPT rather than MBT because of its size.  Windows otherwise sees the disk as normal.  This is both in the Desktop GUI and with pgpwde --enum.  Another (1 TB) USB disk is recognised, as are some internal drives, but they are all MBT.

pgpwde --version shows "Symantec Drive Encryption, Version 10.3.2 (Build 15495)"

Ideas?

Andy,

I understand your frustration. I just had a call with a customer about something similar the other day. He had a 3TB drive. Unfortunately, there is currently a size restriction of 1.8TB (although we recommend reformatting down to 1.5 to make sure you dont come close to the maximum size), and sector sizes above 4k are not supported.

Some people have had luck by reformatting their drives into multiple partitions that are smaller than 1.8TB. If you do so, please make sure you are not putting any important data at risk. Backups are important.

Here is an article describing our drive requirements. I hope this helps you!

Symantec Drive Encryption does not currently support 2 TB and larger external drives. This includes GPT partitioned drives and NTFS partitioned drives that exceed 1.8 TB per partition. -
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH200099

Good luck!
Phil

I've been playing around with different partitions on the drive (its empty) but none show up for pgpwde.  Windows doesn't let me select an allocation size less than 4096 (I tried but it doesn't format) for any size of partition (I'm guessing because the physical sector size is 4096).

Its a shame the hard limitation wasn't clearer - the docs that I read indicated that the problem in earlier versions was the lack of GPT support, and as GPT support was necessary for larger drives, then it wouldn't work.  But as GPT was now supported in 10.3.2 it would now work.  As there is still a size limit then I guessed wrong.  What is doubly annoying is on top of not being able to use Drive Encryption to encrypt the drive I'm now going to have to buy a drive with built in encryption to be secure.

 I apologize that it was not easy to find. We have so much documentation out there. I think that this is typical of any software that needs to be adapted for so many different purposes, and is tested such such a large variety of hardware. Unfortunately, it sounds like your external drive does not support sector sizes smaller than 4k. That may be a limitation of the hardware.

External drive encryption is still posible, unless you are required to have a single partition that is encrypted and larger than 1.8TB Have you considered returning the drive, and looking for a drive that will allow you to format with a smaller sector size?


If you must have external drive encryption, this seems like the least expensive option. As long as you may return that drive. I cannot recommend any specfic drives, but I know that there are larger drives out there that do support a smaller sector size and can be repartitioned into multiple 1.5TB partitions.