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I was looking to purchase a new SSD and want to use it to store sensitive data, that I would not want people to steal or access.

Have been trying to research it and only read bad things about hardware encryption.

Here is an example: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/crucial-samsung-ssd-encryption-bypassed,38025.html

And I don't necessarily trust hardware companies to not have backdoors / vulnerabilities within the software/firmware its using.

So I am beginning to think maybe I should just buy a regular external SSD, without hardware encryption and encrypt it with software?

Have been looking at a few methods and seems most people say that VeraCrypt with AES 256 for the encryption algorithm and SHA-512 for the hash algorithm is the best option.

I plan to use this external SSD for my main operating system as well storing sensitive data. I read that using VeraCrypt will cause lower speeds. I am using USB3.0 so the speeds are already effected by that from what I've read. And then adding encryption software like VeraCrypt on to it will cause it to be slower.

I do not mind giving up the speed for extra security. Although I would love to hear what others suggest. If it causes it to be slower, but has the best security, I would prefer that. I guess I just am not sure which to get or how I should be encrypting the data.

If anyone could give some suggestions along with reasons, why I would greatly appreciate it.

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... I would love to hear what others suggest.

Looks like at least Microsoft does not trust the internal encryption in SSD anymore. It switched to software based encryption for BitLocker by default:

BitLocker, Windows' built-in encryption tool, no longer trusts your SSD's hardware protection
After reports of widespread flaws in hardware-based SSD encryption, Microsoft has pushed out an update that defaults BitLocker protection to software-based AES encryption.

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  • Interesting article, thanks for sharing it was informative. What would you suggest to be used for encryption on a storage device? Is veracrypt the best?
    – ApexLegend
    Dec 15, 2019 at 8:02
  • @ApexLegend: Product recommendations are off-topic here. It is also not clear what you mean with "best", since this might include security, speed, easy of use, costs, compatibility, long-term availability, recovering from disk errors ... The importance for each of these is your personal decision. But it is considered secure enough for most common use cases when properly used.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Dec 15, 2019 at 8:22
  • Sorry, I stated that the best for me would be preferred security over speed, as I would rather it be secure and don't care about speed as much. I should have been more clear about others. Cost does not matter. I am not looking for product recommendations necessarily, from what I've read going with hardware encryption is not a good idea. I am looking for software encryption recommendations. For compatibility if you mean the OS then it would be Windows and Linux I would like to be able to use it for. Thanks for your response! @Steffen Ullrich
    – ApexLegend
    Dec 15, 2019 at 8:36
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    Note that Microsoft uses TPM and there is an attack on the TPM, TPMfail and you can read also on Cryptography What is TPMFail attack and what are the countermeasures?
    – kelalaka
    Dec 15, 2019 at 15:47
  • Thanks for sharing I learned a lot from that @kelalaka
    – ApexLegend
    Dec 16, 2019 at 0:21

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