How come more people don't run HDD Encryption on their laptops?

[kyrax12]

Or even their personal desktop? It doesn't really detract from the usability and it gives the user a peace of mind in-cased their computer gets stolen.

 

[dullard]

Biggest answer: it probably requires technical knowledge and/or effort to turn on.

Other answers:
1) Honestly, does it matter if thieves get your blurry family photos, old school reports, solitare high scores, and form letters?
2) I don't know, but it is difficult to recover your data after a crash?

I think the real question should be: why would anyone put credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. on their computer? Anything that you should be worried about being stolen should not be on a computer.

 

[kyrax12]

Biggest answer: it probably requires technical knowledge and/or effort to turn on.

Other answers:
1) Honestly, does it matter if thieves get your blurry family photos, old school reports, solitare high scores, and form letters?
2) I don't know, but it is difficult to recover your data after a crash?

I think the real question should be: why would anyone put credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. on their computer? Anything that you should be worried about being stolen should not be on a computer.

Well there are Facebook logins, banking done on the computer and sites that are still logged in on the computer. I mean people that have access to your Facebook can deal a lot of damage to your rep and such.

Do you really need so much technical knowledge to encrypt your HDD. It is just a matter of running a program like Truecrypt right?

 

[ultimatebob]

For me, I just don't see the benefits of it outweighing the risks. It's not like I have government secrets stashed on my home PC.

If Windows gets corrupted, I WANT to be able to easily get my data back by popping the drive in another system. In this case, the only person that the encryption is impacting is myself.

 

[Humpy]

I don't understand how it works or the benefit it provides.

At some point, maybe five years ago, I started to hate computers/phones. I want them to be as simple to use as my microwave. Instead they have hundreds of settings, found in dozens of different places, that often change without my knowledge.

I'm not going to deal with encrypting what I already don't care about.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I never really bothered till recently. My desktop is now encrypted, though I should probably encrypt my servers too as that's where all the data actually is. wonder what kind of performance hit I'd get if I did the servers though including data luns. Suppose if I do it right at the file system level on the file server, so the file server does all the processing, and not each individual VM it probably would not be too bad. I do want to look at fully restructuring my storage/vm network one of these days, so it's something to consider. I really need to come up with some kind of console setup for my server room though, as if I encrypted the servers it would require physical intervention to turn them on if they need to be turned off for any reason. Right now it's pretty much the thing of praying that they come back up. Rackmount consoles are freaking expensive, like several grand. I'm not paying that for a monitor and keyboard. Might have to rig something myself and while I'm at it, do a full KVM.

Of course, you also need a key that is secure enough, and that you can actually remember. It's not something you need to type in often so the remember part may be tricky. Suppose you could write it down in some rather cryptic way on a small piece of paper, and store it in a bank lock box and maybe somewhere in the house. Like a grid of random characters and all you need to remember is the pattern.

The one I have for my desktop is not really that complicated, but it's just enough to say I have some basic level of security. I'm sure the government would be able to crack it within a day with their supercomputers.