Question

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Encrypt: Overwrite empty disk space bad for SSD drives?

rated 0 times [ 4] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3512 / 1 Year ago, wed, january 25, 2023, 2:58:59

I am installing Ubuntu 14.04 and got the choices of:

Encrypt the new Ubuntu installation for Security

Use LVM with the new Ubuntu installation

If I select Encrypt and go to next step, I get to write a password/passkey and then there is another choice:

For more security: [checkbox] Overwrite empty disk space

There are answers to what it does in this thread - For more security: overwrite empty disk space, i.e. overwriting unused space to make it more difficult to recover data.

My question is...

Is this bad for SSD since it will then write more than "needed"?

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zebrla

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3 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago heaco · Accepted Answer

Not really. Using that option will cause a single write to every sector of the SSD partition that you assign to Ubuntu. Used sectors will get encrypted data. Unused blocks will get random data. This is the equivalent of a Windows "Full Format". Modern SSD drives are rated for hundreds, or even thousands, of terabytes of writes before any significant number of sectors get reallocated. See The SSD Endurance Experiment. Even the worst performing drive there was capable of enduring 140GB of writes per day for 10 years. The initial wiping of the drive (around 250GB for an average 2014 drive) will be insignificant in comparison to the total writes over the lifetime of the drive.