Do you use hard drive encryption?

freebooter

freebooter

freebooter

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I am thinking of getting a new nvme drive for os and general use. Looking at reviews one feature that not all drives have is hardware encryption. I have never encrypted my windows pc but do encrypt my linux pcs. From what I understand hardware encryption should have less overhead and hence be quicker. Many drives either from 'lesser' brands or lower ranges don't have it and some drives that claim to have it don't actually work with bitlocker.

I was wondering how many people use encryption for home use? If so do you insist on hardware support or just use software encryption?
 
The only encryption I have on is my external 2.5 travelling hard drive with all my work files and personal media on. It's nothing crazy but more for my piece of mind and just use bit locker. Took about a day to encrypt 4tb but no issues accessing it after speed wise
 
I have 6' steel door on my house with DNA, retina, voice, face recogition.
Sentry guns in every room, with IR sensors that detect my unique body signature.
Flamethrowers on the stairs that measure my weight, and how I walk placing my feet.
Spinning blades like the Indy jones movie so only myself know where they come out of the wall and floor.
Cages with hungry bears that open up if don't enter in a 100,000 digit passcode correctly.
Finally a air canisters that contain VX nerve agent if don't use correct numbers on my vault spin dial.
Then HD drive encryption.
 
No reason not to these days. I've got encryption turned on for all my Macs. It's just a switch - set it and forget about it.
 
Thanks for the replies. As I said in the op I am looking at getting a new drive and was wondering whether it was worth paying extra for one with hardware encryption. Nobody has mentioned hardware encryption so I am assuming those that are using bitlocker are just using the default software solution.

I have looked into it a bit more and found an article from Tom's Hardware claiming up to 45% loss of performance using software bitlocker. It seems a bit of a waste to buy fast drives and then lose so much. The hardware encryption had virtually no performance loss by comparison.

However, it seems there are some concerns over the security of the hardware implementation in many drives even from top end manufacturers. Probably for this reason MS defaults to software encryption and it is quite convoluted to enable hardware encryption instead.
SimonRigga said:
I use encrypted file containers rather than entire hard drive encryption.. mainly for client files and databases..
Click to expand...

I am wondering whether to go this route. It is my home pc that I am considering and it is used mainly for gaming. The only risk to it is if it got stolen in a burglary. There would only be a few personal files that I would be bothered about some getting access to. The other issue may be browser data and files, saved passwords etc. I don't know how secure those are. A bit of care and using manually encrypted folders may be good enough and preserve the drive performance.

What do you use to encrypt folders? I see windows has the ability to encrypt individual folders easily.
 
freebooter said:
Thanks for the replies. As I said in the op I am looking at getting a new drive and was wondering whether it was worth paying extra for one with hardware encryption. Nobody has mentioned hardware encryption so I am assuming those that are using bitlocker are just using the default software solution.

I have looked into it a bit more and found an article from Tom's Hardware claiming up to 45% loss of performance using software bitlocker. It seems a bit of a waste to buy fast drives and then lose so much. The hardware encryption had virtually no performance loss by comparison.

However, it seems there are some concerns over the security of the hardware implementation in many drives even from top end manufacturers. Probably for this reason MS defaults to software encryption and it is quite convoluted to enable hardware encryption instead.


I am wondering whether to go this route. It is my home pc that I am considering and it is used mainly for gaming. The only risk to it is if it got stolen in a burglary. There would only be a few personal files that I would be bothered about some getting access to. The other issue may be browser data and files, saved passwords etc. I don't know how secure those are. A bit of care and using manually encrypted folders may be good enough and preserve the drive performance.

What do you use to encrypt folders? I see windows has the ability to encrypt individual folders easily.
Click to expand...

The best way to secure passwords etc is to just put them in an encrypted zip file or use something like keepass.

Bitlocker only encrypts the data at rest no matter which one you pick, so it's not going to stop someone stealing data when the PC is on via malware etc.
 
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