Does SecureDoc software-based encryption reduce the effective life of a disk drive in any way (Solid State Drives included)?
No. Apart from the initial conversion (encryption), SecureDoc software encryption doesn’t increase the number of reads or writes to the drive and therefore has no impact on the long term endurance of the drive or Solid State Drive (SSD).
Some notes regarding the initial conversion, relating to both regular platter-type drives and Solid State Drives:
With respect to software full disk encryption, it is best practice never to write confidential information unencrypted to the drive. This applies to HDDs and even more so to SSDs. For a drive that has never had confidential data written to it, we recommend performing a ‘Standard’ conversion. ‘Standard’ conversion only performs the initial encryption on LBAs (Logical Block Addresses) that are marked in use by the file system. Once conversion has completed all new writes to the SSD are encrypted. A standard conversion can be very quick: for example, it takes about 25 minutes to convert an Intel 320 Series SSD with a 40 GB image on a laptop that supports AES-NI. A ‘Standard’ conversion is quick and from an ‘endurance’ perspective leaves the SSD in a good state where it knows which LBAs are free and which ones are really in use.
If the Intel SSD has unTRIMed deleted confidential data, we recommend a ‘thorough’ conversion followed by TRIM* (see link at the end of this article).
Intel offers a tool that can be used to manage Solid State Drives - available here: http://www.intel.com/support/go/ssdtoolbox
We do not implement OS TRIM requests directly but we do not block them either. That is, if someone deletes a file and the OS TRIMs it then those LBAs will be "returned” to the SSD. If someone reads a previously TRIMed LBA we will decrypt whatever the SSD supplies for data transparently.
* TRIM command allows an operating system to inform a solid-state drive (SSD) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.