Will be there any negative effects of encrypting SSD with TrueCrypt? Like, shortening the life of the SSD or causing performance issues. I am planning to create two partitions on the SSD - one system partition with Windows 7, and one partition for data - and encrypt both partitions.
I believe that VeraCrypt is a better choice now than TrueCrypt. Given that TrueCrypt hasn't been supported for over four years. But do see https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Trim Operation.html about using it on SSDs.
I guess then it is more secure to use HDD, than SSD, if i want to use encryption. I believe TrueCrypt is still safe to use even it is not developed any more.
Or maybe it isn't. But the question is "why would you even want to use it?" What OS are wanting to use it with - I'm guessing W7?
Yes, i am using Windows 7, and i am using TrueCrypt because i am used to encrypt my hard drives with it. But this is not my concern. My concern is if the SSD will have performance issues if it is encrypted with TrueCrypt (or VeraCrypt), like slowing down the read and write speed, for example.
I think that even somehow slowed down SSD will be faster than HDD. Disabling trim may unfortunately reduce the effectiveness of wear leveling algorithm thus reduce lifetime of SSD. In this case to improve effectiveness of wear leveling algorithm I would free 10-20% percent of SSD via creating smaller partitions. If you already had partition on this space create partition there and use Gnu/Linux's (it may be liveCD/liveUSB) command "blkdiscard". Whether information leak about which blocks are freed (when trim is enabled on encrypted partition/filesystem) should concern you depends on threat model. If your threat model is just about protection from typical theft of laptop/SSD drive I don't think this should concern you.
It will slow it down abit but if you have a modern processor with AES support you wont notice this especially in widows. I've been using TC for years with w7 and HDDs/SSDs. for newer OS than w7 I would go with VC.
https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html For details on vulnerabilities, see: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Release Notes.html
