Win 7, Encryption and SSD

tuxxdk · 06 Dec 2010

Hello,

I hope I've managed to choose the correct place for this post, else please direct me

Now, I was planning to utilize TrueCrypt for complete drive-encryption on my Win 7 installation. I don't have a motherboard with an option to utilize Bitlocker.

However, seen reviews and benches in this regard put a sad smiley on my face - damn those SSD's seem to run poorly with full drive encryption on Win with Truecrypt.

What options do I have? A container-solution is not useable in my case, I do need complete drive encryption (or at least system-partition encryption).

I also read some negative stuff on wear and tear, trim etc. when using encryption.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,

severedsolo · 06 Dec 2010

Hi tuxxdk welcome to Sevenforums.

Personally, I would go with Bitlocker, I use it myself and there is little to no slowdown, I mean if its there, we are talking milliseconds.

As for not having a TPM motherboard, don't worry about that. We have a tutorial made by our very own Brink which will show you how to turn that particular check off, all you will need is a USB flash drive (In fact, you don't even need that, I use an SD card as my key): BitLocker Drive Encryption - Windows 7 Drive - Turn On or Off with no TPM

Hope this helps :)

tuxxdk · 06 Dec 2010

Thanks for the welcome, severedsolo!

I will definitely look closer on that guide tomorrow if I can find time for it, and then I'll return with the results. Thanks for the link!

I wasn't aware that it was possible without a TPM-capable motherboard.

If I run sour with Bitlocker, do you have any experience with Truecrypt and SSD's?

Thanks again for that excellent guide. It's most helpful!

tuxxdk · 07 Dec 2010

As promised, here is an update.

Bitlocker works so far - it's setup and has completed encryption. Great

Now all's left is some benchmarking.

Great forum this is - thanks again

tuxxdk · 09 Dec 2010

To wrap things up, I did some benchmarking (read-tests) on my SSD drive. With encryption (eCryptFS) on Linux I had ~270MB/sec, but with encryption on Windows (Bitlocker 256bit w/difuser) I have around 170MB/sec.

That's ALOT performance-hit, however, the system still seems snappy and very fast, so I've decided to leave it that way for now. I can and will not go the non-encryption way, so it's a "take it or leave it"-situation