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My new laptop has multiple hard drives, but my system drive is a Samsung 840 EVO (an SSD). According to Samsung's website, the drive supports hardware-based full-disk encryption (which, although it's closed-source and vaguely shady, I'm given to understand is in some ways a superior solution to software-based alternatives). For hardware-based FDE, I should be able to set the ATA password in the BIOS. When I go to the BIOS, however, there isn't an option to do that. There is an option to set a 'user password,' but this strikes me as a typical BIOS password (especially given that I can't access the BIOS before entering the password, whereas most FDE solutions do allow access to the BIOS), not one that's used for encryption. I thought, however, that the laptop might somehow be using the same password for both... Is there a way for me to tell if this is also somehow being used for my FDE? As I said, I can't mount the drive BEFORE entering the password without physically removing it from the laptop and hooking it up to another computer.

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  • BIOS is on the motherboard, not on the drive, thus not subject to FDE. Not all BIOSes support setting ATA passwords, so this may be a limitation of your laptop's BIOS.
    – Xander
    Mar 11, 2015 at 1:42
  • @Xander So, if the BIOS doesn't offer the option "set ATA password" (or something along those lines), the FDE definitely isn't being utilitzed?
    – KnightOfNi
    Mar 11, 2015 at 1:45
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    FDE can only be enabled if it is supported by both the HDD/SSD and the BIOS. If the BIOS doesn't have the capability then ofcourse it's not going to work.
    – Jay Holister
    Mar 11, 2015 at 1:51
  • @KnightOfNi Yes, that's correct.
    – Xander
    Mar 11, 2015 at 2:05

2 Answers 2

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Extract the disk and connect it to a different machine. If it was protected, it would look as random data. On the other hand, if you can open it and view its files, it is not protected.

Note there are other reasons for not viewing the files although they are available (such as using a GPT partition, not supported by that second computer), Windows not recognizing it straight away doesn't prove by itself that it is encrypted.

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The hardware encryption in Samsung SSDs is flawed in many ways — it is not supported at all in any systems other than Windows (via BitLocker™) and it is a big PITA to deactivate it (And guess what? For this you'll need also real Windows installation to do this, and also an application which is not even published for end users, it was just "leaked"). So if you suddenly have to use that disk on another OS, prepare for a great pain. (I'm writing it because I had this experience)

Also it's next to impossible to actually verify how it works (and does it even work, or there's just a simple switch that allows/denies access to the data without any encryption). Therefore, right now it would be wise to consider avoiding this technology. Especially keeping in mind that today's CPUs usually handle encryption (AES) really fast.

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