It looks like Microsoft released an update on September 24, 2019 that defaults new drives to use software encryption instead (I'm guessing it uses AES-NI under the hood if available):
> Changes the default setting for BitLocker when encrypting a self-encrypting hard drive. Now, the default is to use software encryption for newly encrypted drives. For existing drives, the type of encryption will not change.
And last I looked into this, nvme doesn’t support edrive encryption. And it doesn’t really matter very much any more with all of the encryption accelerators in modern cpus. Someone please correct me on either account if I’m wrong!
Damn, wish I knew this before I returned the WD for a Samsung 980 Pro. I just checked and hardware encryption isn’t even turned on and I would have to wipe to enable it :(
> Changes the default setting for BitLocker when encrypting a self-encrypting hard drive. Now, the default is to use software encryption for newly encrypted drives. For existing drives, the type of encryption will not change.
Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/september-24-2019-...