this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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I was recently intrigued to learn that only half of the respondents to a survey said that they used disk encryption. Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows have been increasingly using encryption by default. On the other hand, while most Linux installers I've encountered include the option to encrypt, it is not selected by default.

Whether it's a test bench, beater laptop, NAS, or daily driver, I encrypt for peace of mind. Whatever I end up doing on my machines, I can be pretty confident my data won't end up in the wrong hands if the drive is stolen or lost and can be erased by simply overwriting the LUKS header. Recovering from an unbootable state or copying files out from an encrypted boot drive only takes a couple more commands compared to an unencrypted setup.

But that's just me and I'm curious to hear what other reasons to encrypt or not to encrypt are out there.

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[–] notarobot@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Yes. I have sensitive info in my PC (work credentials) and in the case of a break-in, last thing I want is to jeopardize my job.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 2 points 3 months ago

I encrypt my home folder and Windows install just in case someone breaks into my house and steals my computer. Super annoying entering my password each boot though.

[–] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

I don’t have FDE (BitLocker) enabled on my Windows 11 gaming PC. It sits in my house and has nothing on it but video games and video game related shit. I don’t even have my password manager installed for logging in to Steam, GoG or whatever other launcher. I manually type passwords in from the vault on my phone if the app doesn’t support QR code login like discord. Also I paid for this ridiculous m.2 nvme drive, I’m not going to just give up iops bc i want my game install files encrypted.

I don’t use FDE on my NAS. Again it doesn’t leave my house. I probably should I guess, bc there is some stuff on there that would cause me to have industry certs revoked if they leaked, but idk I don’t. Everything irreplaceable is backed up off site, but the down time it would take to rebuild my pirated media libraries from scratch vs just swapping disks and rebuilding has me leery.

I have FDE enabled on both my MacBooks. They leave the house with me, it seems to make sense.

I don’t use FDE on Linux VMs I create on the MacBooks, the disk is already encrypted.

My iphone doesn’t have the option to not use FDE I don’t think.

I use encrypted rsync backups to store NAS stuff in the cloud. I use a PGP key on my yubikey to further encrypt specific files on my MacBooks as required beyond the general FDE.

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I don't, I didn't do it back then and I ended up using this system for much longer than I thought I would(4+ years). I want to do it next time but I don't feel like reinstalling just for that.

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[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 months ago

Yes because it is one click

If I delete my drive, it is rubbish

It doesnt impact my performance much

[–] LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Encrypting your entire hard drive has basically been a tickbox in the Fedora installer for a long time now. No reason why I wouldn't do it. It's, easy, doesn't give me any problems and improves my devices security with defence-in-depth. No brainer.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 3 months ago

It’s a smidge more difficult on Debian if you want to use a non-ext4 filesystem - granted for most people, ext4’s probably still fine. I use it on my desktop, which doesn’t have encryption.

[–] Extrasvhx9he@lemmy.today 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah all my drives are encrypted with LUKS mostly because of home burglaries (bad area and whatnot). I still keep backups regardless on drives that are also encrypted

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Only encrypt the home partition, for the root partition it just unnecessarily slows down the system.

Also, I think, there could be different approaches instead of encryption. AFAIK, android doesn't use encryption underneath, but uses a semi-closed bootloader (which means, if you install a different OS, all user data gets wiped). I'm currently investigating the feasibility of such an approach in the long term.

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No need as none of them are networked

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Do you physically crush and grind your drives once they are end-of-life?

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[–] bier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago

I made the mistake of not setting up encryption on my main 45TB zfs pool so I'm currently backing up everything on there to tape so I can recreate the pool (also need to change from mirrored to raidz) and then copying everything back to the drives. Although writing and reading each are around 6 days continuesly. Didn't want to bite the bullet and pay more then I absolutely had to and only got a LTO-4 drive and tapes.

[–] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 months ago

Depends. On external drives yes. On internal boot drive no. I had performance issues and thermal issues with it so stopped on boot drives.

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