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.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    I don’t wanna risk losing anything on the drive thats important .

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      19 days ago

      May i suggest a technique for remembering the password?

      write it down

      but instead of writing down the password, write down questions that only you can reasonably answer. For example:

      • what was the name of the first girl i kissed?
      • where did i go to on summer camp?
      • which special event happened there?

      and the answer would be: “mary beach rodeo” or idk what. this way, you construct a password out of multiple words that each are an answer to a simple question.

      • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        19 days ago

        That is a good reason to backup

        This is true.

        but has nothing to do with encryption.

        I disagree with this. If you forget the password for decrypting your drive, then you will have lost “anything on the drive that’s important”. I know because it happened to me long ago, and so now I too have been wary of disk encryption ever since then.

        • Quazatron@lemmy.world
          0·
          19 days ago

          Encryption and backup are orthogonal domains. If you don’t understand why, I’m sure you’re not going to take a random strangers’ opinion on the subject.

          • utopiah@lemmy.ml
            0·
            19 days ago

            Mind expanding just a bit through? IMHO it’s not orthogonal in the sense that either your backups are :

            • unencrypted and thus your is are safe (you have copies you can access despite losing your keys) but not secure (someone else can read the content too)
            • encrypted and thus your data is NOT safe if you lose your keys but secure

            Isn’t it?

      • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        19 days ago

        I meant if I lose my encryption key I lose the data on the disk.

        • mholiv@lemmy.world
          0·
          19 days ago

          That is a good reason to backup, but has nothing to do with encryption.

          (For real though I have a backup of all of my drive LUKS headers stored on several media types on and off site.)

          • keegomatic@lemmy.world
            0·
            19 days ago

            How would backing up help with that, though, assuming the backups are also encrypted?

            I meant if I lose my encryption key I lose the data on the disk.

            If they lose the key they lose the data in the backups, too. So that concern is not a good reason to backup, in my eyes.

            Then, if the backups are not encrypted, then doesn’t that undermine the value of encrypting your drive/user data partition in the first place?