The point of encrypting free space is just so you can't say how full the drive is. This way, an attacker can't focus cracking on the fullest disk, match stolen

The point of encrypting free space is just so you can't say how full the drive is. This way, an attacker can't focus cracking on the fullest disk, match stolen backup disks to hosts based on non-sensitive health metrics, etc. >The only way I can imagine this could happen is by overwriting the entire disk initially with random data Traditionally, for speed, you'd write all zeroes to the encrypted volume (causing the physical volume to appear random), but yes >Then, when a file (which, when written, would have been encrypted) is deleted You'd just leave it. Crucially, you don't TRIM it. >I would argue that overwriting an encrypted file with random data isn't really encrypting free space Yup, that's why it's not done