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Why is a self-encrypting drive better at protecting data than a regular hard drive that is using full disk encryption software?

April 26, 2017Data disk drive encryption Protecting regular self-encrypting Software

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Why is a self-encrypting drive better at protecting data than a regular hard drive that is using full disk encryption software?

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Security hardware cannot be modified by software, so a self-encrypting drive is more secure than a regular drive with software encryption. Hardware encryption is also faster than software encryption. A self-encrypting drive will encrypt at host interface speeds and does not require a significant one-time encryption process. Hardware encryption is also independent of the processor. A self-encrypting drive using encryption has no impact on the PC processing speed. Finally, self-encrypting drives have much less overhead for management, reassignment, etc. than do regular hard drives with full disk encryption software.