I was recently intrigued to learn that only half of the respondents to a survey said that they used disk encryption. Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows have been increasingly using encryption by default. On the other hand, while most Linux installers I’ve encountered include the option to encrypt, it is not selected by default.
Whether it’s a test bench, beater laptop, NAS, or daily driver, I encrypt for peace of mind. Whatever I end up doing on my machines, I can be pretty confident my data won’t end up in the wrong hands if the drive is stolen or lost and can be erased by simply overwriting the LUKS header. Recovering from an unbootable state or copying files out from an encrypted boot drive only takes a couple more commands compared to an unencrypted setup.
But that’s just me and I’m curious to hear what other reasons to encrypt or not to encrypt are out there.
Speaking as someone who doesn’t encrypt their desktop but is thinking about it:
you can’t share (readable) data over one’s home network if the sending PC is disk-encrypted?
For example, are you saying that if I send a video file from my PC, which is disk-encrypted, over LAN to my NAS, then the NAS would not be able to read said file?
Disk encryption does not impact file sharing over the network.
Sure if you sharing by a USB portable drive you have to unlock and lock it every time you use it. That is separate thing though.
The bigger issues of encryption are one should have a good backup and recovery plan both for media and for the keys. One has to consider legacy planning too. How do your personal representatives access.