I have a SanDisk Extreme II SSD. Despite using Marvell 88SS9187 controller, the drive does not support hardware encryption of any kind. I read around a bit and found that most software does encryption in memory and then writes on the drive, but couldn't find a straight answer to my question.
On Ubuntu: If I encrypted my home folder, would that change in any way how the drive operates? Would there be any performance hit or life reduction?
On Windows: Windows 8.1 is enabling me to activate BitLocker and I can easily install TrueCrypt. My question is what is the best option - full-disk/partition or virtual disk encryption with BitLocker/TrueCrypt?
My main concern is that I am unaware of how Ubuntu encrypts the home folder dynamically and how BitLocker works on SSDs without hardware encryption. (Why is this even a concern? Do HDDs have something up their sleeve to SSDs when in comes to encrypted file writes?) Essentially, why would anyone make hardware encryption a thing if all encryption is made in memory and then written to disk.
PS: As it is a non-SandForce SSD, I also couldn't find a lot of information on the compression policies of the drive. Hopefully some SanDisk enthusiast could clarify the situation for me.