Encrypt external SSD?

[tiwhite]

Hi.

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this but I'm not sure who else to ask...

I've recent put an m.2 Samsung 850 EVO SSD into a small enclosure and am using it as an external USB disk drive. As I hoped it would be, it is small, fast and works well. I'm using it for rudimentary backups and to transfer files etc.

Now I'm using it I would really prefer it be encrypted. However even with lots of fiddling and Googling I am struggling as it's just not clear how it's best done. In summary:

- The SSD was advertised as having always-on hardware level encryption but I can't work out how to set the password. I'm mostly using Windows 10 Home which doesn't seem to have Bitlocker and even if it did I understand that after Windows 8 MSFT disabled the ability for Bitlocker to set external SSD passwords.

- Samsung Magician can't see the actual drive, it just sees the ASMT bridging chip in the enclosure.

- From what I've read, software encryption (TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt/etc) is probably fine for a small encrypted volume but not good for encrypting the whole drive. I'm not technical enough to understand the reason/limitation but I've read that encrypting the whole drive somehow interferes with the SSD's own storage management (wear-levelling etc) which I've read can significantly affect performance.

Now external SSDs are so common I imagine there is a recommended way to do this ... but I haven't found it.

In order, my preference would be to utilise the existing hardware encryption, if not then software encrypt the whole drive, if not then software encrypt most of the drive, if not then how much can I encrypt?

Any advise appreciated...

[tiwhite]

Anyone?

[labtech]

Why not search and experiment a bit? It would likely be fun. Just make sure you have an extra copy of the data decrypted before final decision in case things go wrong while experimenting.
Here is an example: http://lifehacker.com/five-best-file-en ... ls-5677725