This section covers common questions and concerns about SEDs.
- Data recovery from a defective or inaccessible SED drive: If data from an SED cannot be read due to a malfunction, accidental release, or mishandling, the data on the drive is permanently lost. The data on the drive remains encrypted, and the DEK is not accessible by any means. Recovery techniques that work on traditional drives are useless on SEDs due to the encryption.
- SED performance: SEDs do not have a performance penalty when compared to non-SED drives. The onboard hardware encryption ensures that the encryption does not impact performance.
- SED formatting: SEDs take more time to format when compared to a non-SED drive. The extra time is required to format an SED because each drive is fully overwritten with random data as part of the encryption initialization process.
To confirm the format process is still running, depending on the OneFS version, the formatting process is either displayed by dots or by percentage. OneFS displays a completed message once the format is complete.
Note: If an SED format process is interrupted for any reason, all SEDs in a node are unusable. The only recourse is to manually revert each drive using the PSID, as described in Cryptographic erasure after the SmartFail Erase state.