File Share Encryption

Currently we are stumbling to have a automated upgrade from winxp/pgp to win7 using SCCM/Microsoft deployment tool

1. We see the following solutions: Decrypt the entire harddrive which can take upto 16hrs for 300GB per machine : I have 2000+ machines hence this is not possible

2. In a manual upgrade the win7 does not detect the harddrive (intended) I guess?? but what is the workaround.

3. There is no technical support or documentation that would help us with the following.

This is a major operating system upgrade and decryption of the drives should be done before doing so.  Also be aware that PGP 9.12 is the first version with support for Windows 7.  9.12 is a little old now, but the following from its Release Notes should still apply to your situation:

If you are upgrading your computer to Windows Vista and want to use this version of PGP Desktop, be sure to uninstall any previous versions of PGP Desktop before upgrading to Windows Vista and installing this release. Be sure to back up your keys and keyrings before uninstalling. Note that if you have used PGP Whole Disk Encryption, you will need to unencrypt your disk before you can uninstall PGP Desktop.

Yes, I agree with Tom here. You should ALWAYS decrypt your hard drive when upgrading your operating system. Especially if you upgrading PGP at the same time as well.

If you wish to speed up decrypting the drive. I would find a 64-bit machine with lots of memory, install the version of PGP Desktop that these clients were deployed with (9.12). Hook up their drives as a secondary drive (slave) and decrypt there. It might just cut the decryption time in half.