This is a study which concerns solid state drives and encryption. Three goals were formulated with the main one being to determine what kind of effect encryption has on a drive's performance. The secondary goal was to determine the current state of storage encryption in relation to awareness and attitudes amongst consumers and companies and also in relation to how easily solutions can be integrated into already working systems. The third minor goal was to determine the performance difference between different encryption software. These three goals were achieved through a background study of current articles, white papers, news and statistics in addition to performing a benchmark study where the performance of eight different encryption solutions representing the most common methods – software encryption, hardware-accelerated encryption through processor instructions and self-encrypting drives – were tested on a fair platform. The results from both the background study and the benchmark measurements show that the self-encrypting drive excel in every area compared to its peers, be it security, performance or system integration. Contradictory to these results is however the fact that general awareness amongst consumers and companies concerning the benefits of self-encrypting drives seems to be quite low and self-encrypting drives on the market are heavily underrepresented.