TR Forums

Here's the deal, whenever I attempt to enable Bitlocker on any drive, I get the error:

"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"

I get this on any of the drives attached. *edit* I can encrypt a 16gb CD card I had lying around

Windows 8.1
Latest Intel RST drivers
TPM shows as OK and ready

So far, my google-fu has failed me.

Could it be related to any of the SATA performance options? Write-back cache etc...?

Well, since 8.1 isn't really released, your support options are limited. Since it works on one device, it seems you have the needed infrastructure. Does this happen on other machines, or just this one?

Yeah I found the issue.. Bitlocker doesn't work on software RAID, no biggie, back to AHCI, all is well and encrypted

Well, there you go. Were you using the Intel SSD caching or something, or a full on software RAID?

I was using the motherboard's Intel raid-0 for a couple of 128gb SSD's. I'm just messing with Bitlocker, but its too bad it won't run on that raid, I'd love to encrypt my fileserver, where all my actual personal docs are kept.

Well, you could switch your fileserver over to Linux... software RAID, encryption, different file systems, etc. are all just layers in the I/O stack that you can mix-and-match at will. You can even choose where the encryption is applied (above or below the software RAID). But be prepared to get your hands a little dirty.

Yeah, I'd have to move fileserver to Linux, and move other services to other server.. right now I have my fileserver, which is also my media server, DC, DNS, and DHCP, and I have another server, which is my Hyper-V host.. so very do-able, with much testing prior to moving my 6TB array over to the dark side

Oddly enough, I came across this issue last night after rebuilding my computer into a new case and swapping some drives. I wasn't able to enable BitLocker on my drives connected to my Intel SATA controller which was in RAID mode. I know I was able to do this in the past, because I set up my computer that way when Windows 8 first came out. Trying again last night proved problematic. What confused me is that my SSD and my "fakeRAID" mirror are both on the Intel SATA controller and work fine (these were already BitLocker enabled).

So, I swapped the drivers of to the 3rd party onboard SATA controller that was AHCI mode and was able to enable BitLocker on them. I then switched them back to the Intel fakeRAID and was able to access the encrypted drives just fine?!

I am 99% sure this wasn't an issue when I installed the first time, I wonder if some Windows 8 update killed this functionality (note, I am NOT on 8.1). You CAN put your controller back in RAID mode and access the drives just fine. My mirror even rebuilds fine (yea, stupid Seagate 3TB drives keep dying on me).