Encrypt SSD or not?

Posted by JamesBradbury on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by JamesBradbury
Published on 2012-09-13T08:08:08Z Indexed on 2012/09/13 9:50 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 295

Filed under:

dual-boot

|

encryption

|

ssd

My desktop machine is running Ubuntu 12.04 (and will probably stay with it until the next LTS). I've got a new 120GB SSD on the way as my existing 420GB spinning disk. If it makes any difference I'll be dual-booting with Windows 7 across both disks too.

I've read some helpful answers here about /home setup and enabling TRIM, which I intend to follow. So most of my /home will be on the SSD, with only photos, videos and music on the spinning disk.

The question is, when I reinstall Ubuntu from CD or USB, whether I should encrypt the SSD?

Specifically:

I'm reading that drive wear isn't much of an issue with modern SSDs as they last decades even if you spam them. Is this true?
How big a performance reduction will encrypting cause (I have an i7 Sandybridge, so I guess it can cope)?
Is it more important from a security point of view to encrypt an SSD? I think I read somewhere that it may be hard to reliably wipe data.

By all means answer even if you only know about one of those things.

© Ask Ubuntu or respective owner

Related posts about dual-boot

How do I know if I am running Wubi or a proper dual-boot?

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I tried to setup a "proper" Windows/Ubuntu dual-boot system, by installing Ubuntu from a USB key. However, I simply could not get the laptop to boot off the USB despite the fact that I made the appropriate changes to the boot device order in the BIOS. So I then turned to Wubi, and (to cut a long… >>> More
Uninstalling Vista from dual boot of Win7/Vista

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Topic title says it all. Right now I have 2 things I need to do... 1) Remove the windows.old folder. My problem with this is that when I go to disk cleanup, the "Remove Previous Window Installations" option isn't there. Not sure what to do here. EDIT: Solved this part. Didn't hit button clean… >>> More
Windows 2000 uninstall on a dual-boot 2000/XP system

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
While several questions have already been answered about removing an OS from a dual-booting machine, most refer to Windows 7 vs. Linux/Vista/XP. I have W2K installed on my older HDD (Drive C). Later on I bought a new HDD and installed XP's under W2K environment. Each time I turned my PC on, I had… >>> More
Partition disk for dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 (shared files)

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I wish to dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7. I wish to have my documents available from both OSes. Do I create a single partition and it just works? 2 partitions, one for each OS? 3 partitions, one for each OS and one for the "my documents"? [EDIT] I used 3 partitions, one for each partition and… >>> More
Partition disk for dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 (shared documents)

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I wish to dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7. I wish to have my documents available from both OSes. Do I create a single partition and it just works? 2 partitions, one for each OS? 3 partitions, one for each OS and one for the "my documents"? [EDIT] I used 3 partitions, one for each partition and… >>> More

Related posts about encryption

SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in… >>> More
Encryption is hard: AES encryption to Hex

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
So, I've got an app at work that encrypts a string using ColdFusion. ColdFusion's bulit-in encryption helpers make it pretty simple: encrypt('string_to_encrypt','key','AES','HEX') What I'm trying to do is use Ruby to create the same encrypted string as this ColdFusion script is creating. Unfortunately… >>> More
Encryption Product Keys : Public and Private key encryption

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to generate and validate product keys and have been thinking about using a public/private key system. I generate our product keys based on a client name (which could be a variable length string) a 6 digit serial number. It would be good if the product key would be of a manageable length… >>> More
Confused about encryption with public and private keys (which to use for encryption)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am making a licensing system when clients ask my server for a license and I send them a license if they are permitted to have one. On my current system I encrypt the license using a single private key and have the public key embedded into the client application that they use to decrypt the license… >>> More
Software tools to automatically decrypt a file, whose encryption algorithm (and/or encryption keys)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have an idea for encryption that I could program fairly easily to encrypt some local text file. Given that my approach is novel, and does not use any of the industry standard encryption techniques, would I be able to test the strength of my encryption using 'cracker' apps or suchlike? Or do all… >>> More