I'm going to be replacing one of my laptop's drives with a Samsung 850 EVO SSD. These are SEDs that can be secured via assigning a HDD password in the BIOS.

The current drive has full disk encryption via Truecrypt 7.1a.

I am debating which option (Truecrypt or ATA/SED) to use on the new drive. Factors I'm considering:

- The ATA/SED option is theoretically more secure because it's (mostly) "hardware" based, and could be faster as well (although the machine has an AES-NI processor which handles Truecrypt AES drives fine).
- I am reasonably confident in Truecrypt's security. I know less about the ATA/SED option, though I have read that ATA passwords can be worked around.
- I have also read that there can be unspecified issues using Truecrypt on SSDs.

Help me ARFCOM. You're my only hope.

From what I've read, it's not recommended because it may interfere with wear-leveling. I don't know if it's ever actually been tested.



 

What OS?  If Linux, encryption is optionally available at install on most distributions.  If it's Windows, as long as you're running Professional or Enterprise you can run BitLocker.

Windows 7 Professional. I do not trust Bitlocker.

I'm "reasonably" confident in Truecrypt, and my main question is whether the ATA password 1) actually encrypts the keys on the SSD (Samsung 850 EVO in my case) and 2) whether bypassing the ATA password compromises the security of the data. Assuming "yes" to 1, I would think "no" on 2.