user2009 wrote:
Hi, I bought the SanDisk 1TB “extreme portable SSD” and used macOS to format & encrypt it in the following manner: APFS /encrypted.
SanDisk’s blurb about “hardware encryption” has me wondering if I should have used their software instead of the mac’s? Im skeptical about their software.
Can I assume that my method just uses the slower software method, OR is macOS smart enough to talk to the hardware chip on my SSD?
Any guidance is appreciated.
v/r
The drive you have is an extremely fast drive.
To utilize the Sandisk (Western Digital) encryption, you have to install the Western Digital software on your Mac and link it to the drive through firmware. The problem with doing this is that before installing any updates to your MacOS, you will need to ensure that it is compatible with the Western Digital software and firmware, or that you have updated that software/firmware in advance.
The penalty of an error here is very high -- being unable to access the drive, usually temporarily, but in some cases it has been reported to be long term. People have posted about this in the Apple Discussions. Usually they simply did not make sure about updating the drive software and firmware before updating their MacOS.
I am a big fan of Western Digital products, both their mechanical external drives as well as SSDs. I have had good experience with these products. But I have only used Apple's Disk Utility to manage them and only Apple encryption provided through Apple's macOS.
