Comment by _verandaguy

This was actually a problem for me on my current gaming PC build!

I had switched to a new AM4 mobo a few years back and decided to spring for a pluggable TPM chip (since the CPU I have doesn't come with TPM onboard). Plugged it in, set everything up pretty seamlessly in windows, no fuss, no muss, boot drive's encrypted transparently. The lack of a password was a bit jarring at first, but it's a gaming PC, so if things go pear-shaped it's not the end of the world.

Fast forward six months and my PC suddently refuses to boot; turns out the pluggable TPM thing was defective and stopped working (without any warning that got surfaced to me).

It was just my boot drive, and reinstalling windows isn't a huge hassle, but it definitely cemented my mixed feelings about passwordless FDE. Had that been the drive I use for my photo library, or my software projects, or work-related documents (tax slips, employment contracts, whatever), that would've been devastating.

It's actually made me rethink the strategy I use for my laptop's backups, and I think I'm in a better place about that now.