this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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Hi everyone,

as my thread from yesterday about shredding SSD's the right way already was very helpful, another follow-up topic came to my mind, which may also be interesting for me and maybe others too.

Since many PC's often use SSD's and less harddrives nowadays it may be interesting to discuss the full-disk encryption of it.

First of all some questions, which came to my mind:

  • Does the encryption of a SSD decrease its performance (read/write-speed) significantly?
  • How does the encryption affect the wear-leveling of the SSD and what should be considered to ensure a safe encryption?
  • Will functionalities like hibernation still work? Are maybe other functionalities affected in a negative way?

I already successfully full-disk encrypted my old laptop (harddrive) with the instructions from StackExchange. My computer has a 1TB SSD + 1TB harddrive and I wish to encrypt completely everything, that's not technically necessary. I want to use Debian as my distro. Could this instruction work the same way as with harddrives?

I'm interested in your knowledge about this.

~sp3ctre

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

How does the encryption affect the wear-leveling of the SSD and what should be considered to ensure a safe encryption?

LUKS, or rather Device Mapper for crypto devices does not enable trim by default, you need to enable it separately.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Specialties#Discard/TRIM_support_for_solid_state_drives_(SSD)

the LUKS wiki also has some general tips, and some for SSDs specifically: https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/-/wikis/FrequentlyAskedQuestions