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by NBJack 36 days ago
Are you saying you bring your desktop on a train ride as well? Laptops with encryption make sense; if you need to encrypt your desktop, I have questions.
6 comments

I have one safety concept for everything and not random ones for random devices.

Every machine is encrypted, unlocked per login.

Encryption is basically free so.

I would. It doesn't even require theft. The naive burglary mitigation is just a happy accident.

I want the crypto-shredding retirement of each storage device. I don't assume I can delete/scrub/overwrite at the time a device goes out of service. I have a box of older HDDs that I still have to get around to destroying properly, because they exist from before the days of practical FDE.

I encrypt my desktop. What if someone breaks in and steals it? My tax returns are on there, banking and investment info, etc. And what if I'm careless about disposing of an internal drive in an old machine that's in the closet, etc. I usually drill or sledge drives, but what if I forget? Encrypting all drives makes sense.
My inference machine is the only drive I leave unencrypted, but that's because it has the models on it, llama.cpp, and nothing else, and I want it back up and running services after a power-failure. My other desktops are encrypted to make hard drive disposal easy.
Simple hypothetical: "A disaster hits and the workstation owner is unable to return to the location the workstation is stored. During that time period the workstation is stolen by a gang of looters."
Ah yes a typical Tuesday for me
I'm not getting insurance for the normal case. I get insurance for the bad cases.

The good thing though: the effort is low. You think through it once and you have your encryption and backup strategy for a long time.

I have a NAS System which only runs when i need it, i scrub every month and that basic setup is the same for the last 12 years.

Burglars are a thing.
Also a reason to have off-site backups. Many people have done backups to local servers, only to discover that they have no way to recover their data because thieves stole everything.