DDP / Hardware Crypto Accelerator Question

Hello,

I just got an M4800 to replace my M4400 that soon turns five years and by that lose warrenty.

Currently I use DriveCrypt Plus to encrypt the harddrive (a SSD) as I am traveling a bit, and its there just as a protection in the event the laptop get stolen.
I am pretty pleased with DriveCrypt, the problem is of course that it is software encryption, so the speed of the SSD goes down to regular HDD speed.

As I am downloading the drivers to do a clean install on the new M4800, I am seeing a driver for "Hardware Crypto Accelerator", and after looking it up online I cant find too much information about it other than on Dell's own pages.

From what Dell says, it looks interesting. What I am wondering on is if someone here is using it, and if do it keep the speed they promise?

I.e. any pros / cons against using it.

Thanks

 

I just talked to a Microsoft Engineer that I work with, as I had some similar questions about Full Drive encryption. While he has a tendancy to "drink the kool aid", he made it sound like Windows Bitlocker is a really good solution. Apparently, Bitlocker uses a hardware TPM (your M4800 should have one) to perform encryption and decryption on the fly, so there is a minimal performance impact. Might be worth looking into, rather than paying for a software license of something you can get for free with windows

 

So a few things:

The Dell HW crypto accelerator isn't generally useful, it's best used with Dell's DDP encryption. It won't accelerate anything for Bitlocker.

Also, given the AES acceleration in all the current Intel CPUs, the need for such a device is questionable.

Also, unless you specifically ordered with the accelerator installed, you don't have one. It's not a standard feature, it's a cost-add option.