If you use Win10 BitLocker on a solid state drive, you need to follow MS’s advice and re-activate it

There’s a bug in most self-encrypting SSDs that leaves the data on the drives wide open. It’s complicated, but in theory anyone who can get at the hardware-encrypted SSD can retrieve all the data on it.

One of the advantages of BitLocker is that it encrypts hard drives so they can’t be cracked, even if a miscreant gets physical access to it.

By default, BitLocker running on Windows 10, set to encrypt a self-encrypting SSD, will flip over to the SSD’s built-in capabilities. Which, as we found out on Monday, is not secure.

The solution? Run BitLocker to turn off the hardware protection, then run it again to turn on software protection.

Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Thx @gborn.

Windows 10 version 1803 isn’t compatible with Toshiba solid state drives, either

Last week we learned that Microsoft didn’t bother to test Win10 version 1803 on some of its Surface Pro (2017) laptops — if they had, they would’ve discovered that 1803 crashes the system entirely. Every Surface Pro (2017) with an Intel solid state drive crashes. Every. Single. One.

Now we’ve received official confirmation that Win10 1803 doesn’t work with Toshiba SSDs, either. Microsoft says they “may experience degraded battery life” but I’m seeing reports that they turn hot as a fiddle in Devil Went Down to Georgia. (That’s my favorite version.)

Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Thx to Wazhai.

Flash-based solid-state drives nearly impossible to erase

If you’re trying to really delete data from a Flash-based SSD drive, or even a USB drive, you’re in for some interesting times.

See my InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.