Does container based full disk/partition encryption reduce SSD life?

Question

Consider Truecrypt/Veracrypt full disk/partition encryption, which as I understand under Windows actually creates an encrypted container which is almost the size of the disk.

As such the SSD is 100% full at all times, as even the empty space is itself encrypted and part of the container.

Am I correct that TRIM would never work because of the above?

It is also my understanding that the time between a block been erased and written to affects the life of a block, so if no space is available it must wipe then immediately write, further reducing the lifespan.

I think all the above would not apply if the full disk encryption was on the entire disk and not using a container.

Do I have this all wrong?

Answer 1

AFAIK disks (SSDs) don't read the partition tables so don't really know or care what's actually in use, they have their own lists of "available" internal memory blocks, and usually have a supply of "spares" to swap in when needed. The "lifetime writes" is supposed to be a very very very large number, like constantly writing for years straight, and in theory shouldn't be a concern anymore...
I have heard about some drives that will compress data, so they could suffer in performance (encrypted data shouldn't be compressible).

When you format a disk with any filesystem, you're always expecting the same blocks to always be available, full of zeros or random info doesn't matter, they're essentially "used" nonetheless. If your written data happens to be encrypted, that shouldn't matter to the disk itself, it's just data.

TRIM can be supported by encryption systems, but it would (in theory) reduce security, since you're saying "these blocks are definitely free", revealing some information.

If your SSD becomes full (with any filesystem not using TRIM, encrypted or not) it could suffer a performance hit with erasing blocks before writing, but that's how they work, and I think it's supposed to be much better now with newer drives, I suppose you'd have to try it to really find out.