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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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100% agree with the sentiment. Working in IT makes you realize how incapable some people can be with even the simplest computer tasks at times. What would you recommend as an alternative for secure data in the case of the average person? File level encryption instead of disk level? Wondering what would be the best way to go about getting my family to secure their private info.
For safety, backups are much better than encryption.
The only thing encryption does is prevent others from reading your data if the machine gets physically lost or stolen. And ironically, that might prevent a stolen machine from ever making it back into your hands.
For desktops, encryption of a machine that doesn’t have critically private/sensitive content is even dumber. I mean, if you have terabytes of CP or are a terrorist, then sure, lock that down to make the police earn their wages. Or do it even if you don’t, but you just want to give authorities the middle finger.
But not much on the average computer needs encryption so long as you keep good physical and network security. And the problem with that is much of it is behavioural - they will need to learn how to not do dangerous things online and off.
In order to protect data is a good backup system - something that just works, is dummy proof, can be administered remotely, and which can restore content easily and reliably.
On a Mac, nothing beats iCloud. It’s encrypted before it even gets uploaded, and Apple has repeatedly shown it cannot retrieve the content… it needs to be forcibly cracked.
On the PC (both Windows and Linux) I prefer Duplicati backing up to BackBlaze B2.
I'm using hardware encryption, i.e. my data is too heavy to be stolen. The manual actually recommends two people lift it.
Oh hey, another T7500 owner! You have the second-CPU caddy installed in that thing?
What do you use yours for?
One is light hosting using VMs. It boots normally.
The other is for experimenting on various OS’ in VMs. It does not boot normally. Even before the 2nd CPU caddy, it always POSTed 10 times - no more, no less - with a memory error code before booting into the hypervisor. And yet, no issues with memory, no issues with RAM slots themselves. Or, at least, it’s affecting all 4 of the on-mobo slots equally.
Actually, it's a Precision 690! Same case, though I'm pretty sure. And yes, I do have the second CPU installed. Dual Xeon 5355's! And 32GB of DDR2. And a GTX 980TI.
I absolutely agree with you, disk encryption is mostly against someone physically taking your device. Phones and laptops? Absolutely, yeah. Desktops? I have some faith in my door lock, and if the cops show up, have fun with my steam library. Most of the data that is interesting for law enforcement is on people's phones nowadays, like regular contacts, media, or message histories. If you encrypt your desktop, sure, by all means do it, but it should be opt-in, not opt-out (or don't-opt-at-all, microsoft).