SSD with Truecrypt?

[Ian]

Are there any users here using SSDs with Full Disk Encryption?

I'm considering getting an SSD for my laptop (as it's pretty slow with a 5200rpm drive), but if I do I'd want to make sure that all my data is encrypted in case I lost it.

I'm currently using TrueCrypt on the mechanical hard drive and it works fine, although it does slow the system down a little.

There's a good deal on a 96GB Kingston SSD V+100 which would do me fine and I'm considering getting it to get a decent speed boost from the laptop. However, because I'll be using FDE there will no doubt be problems with Trim and wear leveling.

After reading several other forum posts, it appears that I may be able to keep the SSD speed up by leaving some unpartition space. Does this sound about right? I wouldn't want to upgrade to an SSD and then find no performance gain (or significantly reduced drive life span) over a mechanical drive.

 

[Thrax]

A cursory search across the web, and on TrueCrypt's own site, seems to suggest that it's probably not a good idea to implement FDE on an SSD.

Leaving an unencrypted partition on the disk is not like to remedy this overmuch, as most SSDs already set sufficient NAND aside to capably perform file ops at speed, even with a full disk. Having additional NAND would certainly help, but you can't be certain if the disk's firmware is tuned to use NAND outside of the special reservation.

Seems like a bad deal all around. I wouldn't do it.

 

[Ian]

Cheers Thrax, it sounds like I'll have to stick with a slower HDD for now. Once the price of SSDs comes down further then perhaps I'll re-consider and go for one with FDE encryption built in. There are a few around at the moment, but they are too expensive to make it worthwhile for a low-end laptop.

I hardly use it, but when I do it's because I'm away travelling and don't want to risk having someone access my data. I guess I'll spend the £80 saved from this purchase on coffee each time I wait for the laptop to boot .

 

[Nibiru2012]

Ian - you could put in a 7200 rpm Samsung HDD. I put one in friend's laptop and it sped things up quite a bit. Not like an SSD, but a lot better than that pokey 5400 rpm seagate that was in there before.

This is the one I used: SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM250HJ 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache

About $50 US dollars.

 

[Ian]

Hmmm, I never thought about just upgrading the speed of the HDD - I'll take a look at some benchmarks and see what sort of performance boost I'd get .

 

[Digerati]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/16/samsung-comes-clean-with-self-encrypting-ssds/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bitlocker-truecrypt-encryption,2587.html

As far as upgrading the drive, there are new "hybrid" drives that use a built-in SSD instead of a standard RAM buffer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591

AnandTech Review,

Seagate's Momentus XT should become the standard hard drive in any notebook shipped.