Does the Crucial M550 SSD need any extra software to encrypt the data on the drive?

Jeff F May 6, 2014
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Does the Crucial M550 SSD require any additional software to automatically encrypt the data being stored on the drive? If so, where can I find it? I purchased this drive recently and I love the technology. I just want to ensure that I’m getting the most out of it.

  1. Bruce E
    May 6, 2014 at 4:03 pm

    Your system needs to have UEFI 2.3.1 support and a UEFI-enabled Windows 8 installation that includes BitLocker. This drive is eDrive compatible, so all you would need to do at this point is enable BitLocker and in a few seconds you are ready to go.

    Even without BitLocker, the data being stored on the drive does appear to be encrypted. The advantage here is that BitLocker will use the hardware for the encryption rather than implementing a software solution on top of it which provides much better performance.

    You can find more details in this Anandtech article.