> Source: [sk179648](https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk179648)

# sk179648 - Media Encryption Blade unable to encrypt the external hard drive at 100% 

| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| Solution ID | sk179648 |
| Date Created | 2022-07-15 |
| Last Modified | 2023-05-07 |
| Technical Level | General |
| Products | Endpoint Security |
| Versions | Cloud, E89.X, E88.X |
| Platform | Open Server |

## Symptoms

- From Client CPinfo - ME logs Error: An error occured while encrypting device Failed moving files to the encrypted storage. pop-up stating that there is insufficient space to encrypt the drive

## Cause

When a user is trying to encrypt the external hard drive with 100% encryption the user did not have the same data space occupied on the external hard drive on to the C drive and hence the encryption failed.

## Solution

While encryption ME creates protected container on the selected device. For that purpose ME needs enough free space on this device to create container with required size. When there is an option "Copied to encrypted storage" existing files should be copied to this new protected container, but it could happen only after container creation. But before this container is created, the data must be stored somewhere.  

Usually this data is temporarily transferred to the local disk and deleted from the device, so it becomes possible to create container of any size.  

But if there is no enough space on the local drive, this data won't be deleted from this device. It could be transferred only from unencrypted part to encrypted one, without something in between. And because of that the amount of available free space on the device to create the container is not 100%, but total disk size minus data size.  

So if the user's device has data that is larger than free space on the local drive, he is able to create encrypted storage with size that is less or equal to "total disk size minus data size".  

Moreover, if the data size is greater than half of the full disk size, it will be impossible to encrypt such disk.

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