> From: tech-boun...@lopsa.org [mailto:tech-boun...@lopsa.org] On Behalf > Of Edward Ned Harvey > > I wonder if there's a hardware solution, that would make the encrypted > disk transparent to the OS, and hence, all the backup tools and other > tools you might use in the OS would remain functional...
Apparently ... Apparently TPM is not a new thing. Even my oldest Dell laptop (5-6 years old) has a TPM, which I never bothered to enable. I have to guess that BitLocker is probably not the first whole-disk-encryption solution to utilize it. Not sure why it seems to have become the new buzz word. Either way, whatever the reason this didn't take off before, I really enjoy BitLocker, and am happy I found it. I'm the only person who knows anything has changed in my computer; it looks, behaves, and performs exactly as it did before. I have some increased cpu utilization to perform my encryption, but my disk performance is not measurably different from before. Well, at most 5% or 10%, which basically falls into the "noise" of hard disk benchmarks. That could be random sampling error. Also, built-in to even my oldest Dell, is the hard-drive password. This is different from a BIOS password, because the hard drive password stays with the hard drive. Even if you move the hard drive to another computer, the hard drive will refuse to do anything without the password (and BIOS support for entering the password.) The disadvantage of the HD pass is: You have to constantly enter the HD pass. Every time you power-on, or wake up. The drive is not encrypted; just locked. Which means data could be recovered from it by disassembling it, or maybe by swapping the electronic circuit. Also, the HD pass would be subject to a brute-force attack. If you lose your password, there's nothing you can do about it. The advantage of the HD pass is: There is no computation overhead. It takes no time at all to configure. _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/