I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 11z) and and SSD (Samsung 128GB) on order.
On my current laptop, I have a spinning HDD and use LVM and LUKS encryption.
I would like to use LUKS on the SSD but from doing a bit of research I am not sure if this is desirable/possible.
It seems that LUKS (possibly???) may prevent TRIM from working.
I can't find any concrete info on this and lots of the info on SSDs such as alignment etc seems to be out of date.
Will TRIM work with LUKS? Because a laptop may be prone to theft, I like to have my data properly encrypted so this is important to me
Best Answer
TRIM does not work for LUKS encrypted partitions because the data being written on the disk is encrypted, even if a block is "empty" according to the filesystem. From cryptsetup 1.4 and later (supplied with 12.04 Precise) and Linux 3.1 (not supplied with Precise), TRIM can be enabled (it is not enabled by default for security reasons). See also TRIM on an encrypted SSD
If you begin to notice a big performance decrease, you should consider backing up the data, clearing your SSD and put the data back. (this may be a reinstall too)
Whether TRIM is supported or not for LUKS encrypted partitions, I'd certainly enable it unless your data isn't worth anything.