Regarding encryption, I'm no lawyer, but I always figure if I were ever wanted by the authorities, it would at least give me a choice whether or not to comply. On the other hand, anything that's not encrypted may as well already be compromised. The other thing encryption buys you is peace of mind if and when you ever sell those drives on the secondary market.

[–] emotional_soup_88@programming.dev 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the valuable input! :)

I always encrypt all my drives - external or internal - because at the very least, I have nothing to loose with today's computing power. The overhead isn't noticeable for me once the drives are decrypted, which takes two seconds with my Ryzen 5800 x3d.

Regarding what you said specifically about the peace of mind that it gives me if and when I were to sell the drives: YES. encryption can even be used as a method of securely ~~wiping~~ scrambling content.

[–] curious_dolphin@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 hours ago

Yup, and for SSDs specifically, I've read online that once you've stored info on the device unencrypted, then down the road you use a software tool like shred, there's no way to guarantee nothing is left in the clear because of wear leveling, so it's best to always encrypt them before we start storing anything on them.