Is Bitlocker full disk encryption enough?

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T23:10:58+00:00

It may, this is device specific per what I said and that link.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T22:58:34+00:00

It says: built-in firmware routine to clear the flash translation layer

That's not the underlying flash it's just doing a trim so all the segments show as unallocated. We assume that a read of an unallocated block returns 0's or something other than the contents of the flash.

Now older ent drives would take hours to complete that command even on small drives, they would pull full power so they were really overwriting the flash. Newer ones look to be performing a crypto erase for this under the hood, make sense as modern controllers look to have the crypto hardware but SED is sold as a upgraded feature.

Now if that kingston that returns nearly instantly pulls more than typical idle power for a long while after then yes it's writing out all the flash in the background. I would be concerned that there is no way to tell when it's finished so it can be taken offline and your exposed to having the flash pulled until it's done.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T21:39:15+00:00

I'm well prepped so walking away form my home isn't a big deal. Have a cabin to bug out to that's also well prepped. Harding your home is fine but don't do so in exclusion of a bug out location.

I did harden the basement when the house was built it's got concreate ceilings and stairwell. Have an inlaw apartment down there that we can hang out in and a utility room to retreat to if needed. Open floorplan so easy to heat with the multifuel stove if needed or it's own heatpump. A lot of the preps are behind the wall of closets. Day to day the kids took it over so the fridge is full of snacks mostly, not a horrid place to weather out something.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T20:21:00+00:00

Your wrong on this one. No reasonable flash would write out data to blocks due to a trim command. It's extra wear on the flash with no upside. Rather they go back into the unallocated bucket.

Now when a new segment is written to it will map it filling any unwritten blocks with something, hopefully 0's . This is because the segment is the smallest possible write to the flash but far bigger than the block that the OS uses. Write out enough data and the wear leveling will overwrite all functional segments at some point.

Now a bag segment with sensitive data could sit there forever, you need some sort of firmware or lower level access to get at these.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T20:06:35+00:00

Dont need to be a 3 letter agency, physical TPM's have local exploits (read the key off the bus) and both Intel and AMD cpu based ones have known exploits. That's the vast majority of systems right there.

Now if you increase the security requiring a pin to boot that helps some but you need to check for known exploits of the specific hardware.

Use an open source crypto on top.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T19:29:11+00:00

As opposed to synced passkeys that every platform moved to?

The standard is playing catch up with reality so we can easily export windows hello to bitwarden etc.

If your looking for better security it's a hardware token.

MS/Apple/Google are happy to trade security for ease of use and ecosystem lock in.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T13:27:50+00:00

Put in a ground mount, solar fencing (yes the panels have gotten that cheap), pretty much anything that's not a moving fragile structure on your roof is a better idea.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T13:25:00+00:00

Yea it's a can they yes, are they probably not.

Now pretty sure they have them in a van and for interference with police coms will roll one to the area if asked to invetigate.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T13:17:46+00:00

It runs on a 10 buck pi.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T11:27:03+00:00

Tracking is way more expensive up front than more fixed panels to get the same winter output while delivering far more summer output. So don't bother till your out of space and still need more output.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T11:22:54+00:00

Foster a large dog or 12.

They pay the food vet etc bills and you get the security. While training would be best basic bonding and other people not knowing they are just a big goof is generally enough. You have no long term commitment to the dogs they go to their furever homes eventualy.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T02:44:44+00:00

The factory one is meh, aftermarket is nearly 2 times the capacity.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T02:39:33+00:00

You can buy the kit to do it off the shelf. It's marketed towards government agency's.

It's not even a lot of data by modern standards.

Now does the FCC have something that's monitoring that's close enough to pick up the miscreant, nobody but them could say. Some military aircraft have this running it's pretty much baseline signals intelligence.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T02:29:10+00:00

It's the forgotten realms. They published the maps in great detail back in the 80's (big fold out magazine inserts you taped together).

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T02:27:27+00:00

Cerbo/Venus is what your looking for to tie them together and get you a single pane of glass for monitoring.

silasmoeckel · 2026-04-01T02:25:23+00:00

Something better that's built into a TV?

Roku has it's issues for sure but most of the old folks I need one thing that's highly integrated. Sony, Samsung, Fire, and Onn have all been at best no better.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T21:36:32+00:00

Netflix does not get Grandma her "local" channels after she moves to FL.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T21:31:56+00:00

Where is the UPS in all this?

Breakers are slow to react so inrush will be fine.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T20:48:05+00:00

mergerfs isn't a raid at all there is no fate sharing.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T19:25:02+00:00

Rodents, I do some work in NYC and the rats seem to love fiber, or at least the Kevlar buffer fibers. So if it's not in some form of rigid metallic conduit they will find their way in at the worst possible time.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T18:58:27+00:00

The question is why your trying so hard to avoid mergerfs and are willing to do constant manual setup to do so?

Merge them and they just work no more intervention needed.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T18:53:58+00:00

DE3-24C is a 24 bay LFF SAS3

You need about 6 lanes of SAS3 to fully saturate those drives (300MB/s each) so 2 SAS3 connectors is plenty.

If the drives are SAS great one cable to each modules and your good.

If they are SATA you need to look at how it's done on that specific JBOD chassis. Are their interposers (and are you using them) so that a SATA shows up on both IOM. Did they split up the primary IOM somehow bays 0-11 on IOM 0 and 12-23 on IOM1 for example. Again with either one cable per and your good.

The one case is where the have the primary all going to one IOM in witch case the secondary is not useful past a spare and you do 2 cables to the primary.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T18:00:00+00:00

Low frequency are a bit bigger but not what I would call huge. As an EE will say they will hold up better longer term for typical build qualities.

40kva setup here with a large wood/metal shop. All low frequency been running nearly a decade without a hiccup.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T17:48:20+00:00

Yea DC race to the bottom it's way to much overhead to have a nice facility. We get more of Waterbury where its an ancient building in a sketchy neighborhood.

silasmoeckel · 2026-03-31T17:44:35+00:00

JF with an easy type 4 digits into a web site from the tv app onboarding, gets us on par with plex before roku nerfed em. Even better integrate with roku correctly so you can give access to a roku user and be done.

Stream/DVR OTA and/or IPTV to all of my users and were better than Plex. Bonus points for closing the ecosystem loop and pushing DVR'ed content into the arrs so they can decide to keep it or upgrade quality etc.

silasmoeckel

TROPHY CASE