960 Evo Encryption

jrwagh333 · 12 Oct 2017 at 20:59

I am recently installed a 960 EVO SSD as my boot drive - I want to encrypt this drive so even if it taken out of the machine, it can not be read.

I can enable a BIOS BOOT password, so that the PC won't boot without the password, but this still doesn't solve my issue of it being removed from the machine and then read

Undesirable · 12 Oct 2017 at 23:57

Software encryption: VeraCrypt (probably the most secure method, but also slow, although most processors these days have AES hardware acceleration. Can also encrypt data already on drive? [not sure]), hardware encryption: Samsung Magician to make ready for encrypted drive, then Bitlocker (Less secure because closed-source, quick, requires secure erase so existing data is wiped).

jrwagh333 · 13 Oct 2017 at 10:16

Samsung magician says the drive doesn't support encryption

jrwagh333 · 13 Oct 2017 at 10:28

Undesirable · 13 Oct 2017 at 18:02

I don't know why it says not supported when AES encryption is listed as one of the drive's features on the official Samsung site. Maybe your motherboard is too old to support it. The easiest way out of it is to just use VeraCrypt.

jrwagh333 · 13 Oct 2017 at 21:34

My motherboard is a CrossHair VI Hero

Undesirable · 13 Oct 2017 at 23:53

Okay, I have exactly the same board as you (but I don't encrypt my drives). Looking at the manual, it does not ship with a TPM (trusted platform module) which may be essential in getting hardware SSD encryption to work. It does have a header to attach a TPM though. Search for other online stores that stock "ASUS TPM" (OCUK doesn't seem to stock them) and look at page 1-30 of the motherboard's manual to see how to attach it. You should be able to enable hardware Bitlocker mode at least then. And of course, if you don't fancy buying this piece of equipment and risk still not being able to enable hw encryption, I recommend VeraCrypt to save you any more headaches.

jrwagh333 · 14 Oct 2017 at 10:15

Thanks very much, but help