encrypting your hard drive that sounds
like some sort of super complicated
process that involves hours of coding
and mathematical calculations just to
protect your data and you might also
think that if you do it it would be
somehow difficult to ever access that
data because it's well encrypt it but in
reality encrypting your hard drive is
pretty easy and in most cases if you do
it you won't even notice any difference
in how you use your computer and there
are actually a few different options
that you have if you want to do it based
on both software and hardware so that's
what we're going to talk about today
so first of all why would you want to
encrypt your hard drive anyway what are
the pros and cons well the main reason
is very straightforward you can probably
guess already which is that when you
encrypt your hard drive the data is safe
if anyone were to physically steal your
computer you see how it works is when
you first encrypt the drive obviously all
your data is encrypted with a key and
obfuscated with whatever can you
choose
so if anyone were to take that drive out
or try to boot up without the password
they wouldn't have any of the data it
would all just look like nonsense but
then how are you supposed to use the
drive
well the software that you use to
encrypt the drive will encrypt and
decrypt the data on the fly so the
operating system doesn't have to worry
about it
so when the operating system needs a
certain piece of data
the software will read it off the drive
decrypt it first and then feed it to the
operating system and when the operating
system wants to write something to the
death again the software will encrypt it
before putting it on the drive
so really your computer will look and
feel exactly the same as it did before
of course if you need to encrypt and
decrypt the data on the fly all the time
you are going to get some performance
loss from the overhead anytime you need
to read or write something it takes a
bit of processing power to do so but
depending on your computer power this
might not even be noticeable at all but
still depending on your situation it
might not be worth it but there is a
hardware option that has basically zero
overhead and we'll get into that in a
bit
you also have to take into consideration
the difficulty in setting up the disk
encryption in the first place based on
the different options with a laptop for
example I really
it's absolutely essential to encrypt
your hard drive simply because you're so
much more likely to have it stolen or
lose it but for a desktop probably a lot
less likely to get it stolen though I
still think I guess it is possible I
suppose so let's talk about software
encryption first I think for most people
the best option would just be to use the
encryption feature built right into
windows called BitLocker it might not be
the absolute most secure options but
it's certainly good enough i mean for
most people they just want to worry
about not having your data stolen by a
common thief or something like that i
think the government wants your date and
they steal your laptop your kind of
screwed but it is probably the easiest
method BitLocker and with BitLocker to
encrypt the drive you basically just have
to go into the options and windows and
enable the feature then follow the
prompts and it does all the work for you
choose a password
it gives you a backup key file in case
you forget it and then it automatically
encrypt the drive and you can even keep
using the computer while it does so
because again it's all on the fly then
the only difference you'll notice from
then on is that you have to boot up the
computer and type in an extra password
or depending on your settings it might
just use your windows password and then
there's basically no difference at all
but i should point out that not everyone
will have access to the BitLocker
feature because it does have some system
requirements first of all you need a
version of windows that includes it
these would be windows seven ultimate or
Enterprise editions windows 8
professional or enterprise or Windows 10
professional or enterprise or the
education version i believe as well the
home editions of windows do not have
BitLocker unfortunately also your
computer will need what's called a
trusted platform module or TPM which is
a hardware chip that is part of the
computer itself so if your computer
doesn't have one you're kind of out of
luck it really have to be building with
it and you technically can enable
BitLocker without a tpm but it's more
complicated and difficult than most
people watching this video are willing
to do so i'm not going to get into that
the good news is though that most modern
mid-range and high-end laptop should
include a TPM chip but if you can't use
BitLocker there
our other free disk encryption programs
like Vera Crypt rift which will encrypt your
whole hard drive do the same thing but--
stop after password and you can look
that up but showing you how to use that
is beyond the scope of this video now
what if you don't want to go through all
the trouble of using software to encrypt
your drive or you don't want to lose any
performance
well as I kind of mentioned earlier in
the video there's a hardware option and
the form of so-called self encrypting
drive and these are like the best of
both worlds basically since they offer
pretty much zero loss in performance but
still protect all your data in the same
way myself encrypting drive is really
just like a regular old drive either
hard drive or SSD but it usually is
a solid state drive these days only it's
going to have a dedicated chip on it
whose job is to self encrypt data on the
fly so with a self encrypting drive
instead of relying on software to
encrypt or decrypt the data while being
written to a red now you have a
dedicated component built right into the
drive so this means that you no longer
have to use the computers resources for
the job and therefore no loss and
performance and using it is basically
the same you set a password then without
that password no one can boot up the
computer or access any data on it but
otherwise it behaves the same as regular
disk drive so where can you get one of
these mysterious self encrypting
drives well you really does that look
for one when you're shopping for a drive
surprisingly this feature is not that
well advertised even drives that have
them even though it's super useful
especially for laptop
we're losing is more likely but also for
desktop since there's basically no
downside that size having to type in an
extra password
actually if you have a high-end ssd you
might actually have the feature already
without realizing it
for example the latest samsung
pro-series SSC's such as the 850 pro or
950 pro those are self encrypting they
have that feature built-in you just need
to enable it but if you were to look at
the newegg product page for these drives
it doesn't even mention encryption
anywhere so unless you were to go to
samsung's website and look at the drives
specs there you wouldn't
out some things to look for if you are
specifically looking for itself
encrypting tribes is if the specs
mentioned phrases such as FDE
which stands for full disk encryption
or sed which stands for self encrypting
drive or opal which is a drive security
specification for self encrypted drives
because opal it probably is self
encrypting now finally I guess I should
go over what encryption will not do for
you it's not magic
so for example it's not going to stop
hackers from reading your data like if
you get a virus since when the computer
is booted up after you enter the
password to drive behaves like a regular
old drive like I just said and any data
that you can read easily the virus can
as well what it will do is stop someone
from physically accessing your drive if
they don't have the password if the
drive is not powered up like they steal
it after it's turned off or something
like that or i guess if you have the dr
networks but not decrypted at the time
they can't access that either obviously
but the main thing is if someone steals
your computer the drive is going to be
completely useless assuming you use a
very strong password that would take
forever to brute-force so as I mentioned
several times before if you're trying to
figure out whether or not it's worth it
to encrypt your drive i'd consider it
absolutely necessary for a laptop that
you take outside your house you might
not think you have anything important on
there but you probably do for example do
you stay logged into your email on your
laptop or do you have personal files
with any kind on your laptop
there's a good chance these could be
used against you without even realizing
it if they were to be stolen
so even though your laptop is gone at
least you can rest easy that your data
is safe and a lot of people don't even
realize that your phone like I phones
these days android phones by default
enable full phone encryption so that's
why someone steals it
they can just plug it in and access all
your data without the pin
now obviously a pin number is not
exactly super strong for an encryption
password not all but most of the time
these phones also have brute force
countermeasures built-in so it really
limits how many times someone can
try a password and then if you type in a
password too many times wrong then it
just erases the phone altogether so
there's some countermeasures built into
phones but for your computer a lot of
people did they just don't encrypt it
all and your data's is just there
so even if you have a password on your
laptop but it's not encrypted it's
useless someone can just unplug that
drive plug it into a computer they don't
have to worry about that password
because they're just looking at the raw
data so i would definitely suggest at
least considering encrypting your drive
depending on the importance of the data
on it definitely for a laptop or
something like that maybe for desktop if
you're in a high risk area i guess but still
not a bad idea so I guess that's it
hopefully I gave you guys some ideas I
didn't want to get too in-depth into
technical as a tutorial or something
like that but hopefully guys still enjoy
this video if you did like it if you
could give a thumbs up I'd really
appreciate it that'd be great and also
let me know down in the comments section
do you encrypt your drive you not bother
or do you only do it sometimes
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