HDD/SSD Encryption / Mother Board Support

[Barryng]

I am considering replacing my 128 GB Samsung 830 SSD with a 256 GB Samsung 840 SSD primarily because the 840 includes hardware based "Advanced AES 256-bit ATA full disk encryption". I use Truecrypt now but, for many reasons, would much prefer a hardware based solution.

After a little research I discovered this feature can only be enabled through the motherboard bios. Even though I have a ASUS P8P67 PRO REV 3.1 (less than one year old) with the latest bios, there is nowhere in the bios menus I can find to enable hardware based HDD/SSD encryption.

I would appreciate some more insight into this as I find it incredible that my motherboard, less than one year old, does not support hardware based encryption.

I also saw a reference in another forum stating hardware based HDD/SSD encryption is only available with X79 motherboards. Is this indeed so? The X79 motherboards appear to be incredibly/prohibitively expensive.

 

[hafa]

What you need is the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Your board has the connector (see page 1-32 in the manual), you will need to buy and install the module and then configure it in Windows. Note, however, that it may or may not work, as support seems to be patchy; $13.56, however, is a pretty cheap gamble...

 

[Barryng]

hafa: Thanks for the response. The P8P67 M-Pro has TPM support but the P8P67 Pro Rev 3.1 (my mobo) does not.