[michaelt]

The encryption relies on you using (and trusting) the drive's built in encryption function.

Most SSDs with built in encryption don't directly encrypt the data with your password - they encrypt the data with a random password, then encrypt that random password with your password. They do this so you can change your password without having to re-encrypt all the data on the disk (which would be slow, and could cause data loss if there was a failure during the re-encrypt process).

Even when you haven't set a password set on your drive, most SSDs encrypt all the data on the actual flash chips (including reserved space, unused space and spare/reallocated sectors) and just store the random password is unencrypted on the same drive. By activating the on-drive encryption, the random password gets encrypted - making your data unrecoverable.

Of course, on-drive SSD encryption is all unauditable closed source stuff. And the cops have complained much more about iPhone encryption than SSD encryption. Make of that what you will.