SSD Performance with TrueCrypt

August 25th, 2012

Using CrystalDiskMark, I checked the speed of my OCZ Vertex 4 before and after I applied full disk encryption with TrueCrypt. I used AES-256 with no wipe.

The performance hit is pretty substantial. The full disk encryption makes the SSD run between 18% and 39%[!] slower, depending on the metric.

I know that some of you guys are also using TrueCrypt with SSDs (yes, we all know it’s not advised). Are you seeing performance hits inline with what I’m seeing?

I guess this is why people shell out for boards that support ATA security mode… You can get AES-256 or AES-128 FDE (depending on the SSD) with no performance hit.

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Update: ATA Security eXtension BIOS

Arne Fitzenreiter has created a BIOS that can add hard drive password functionality to systems that don’t include it. This would allow people to use FDE at full speed (on drives that support it): ATA Security eXtension BIOS.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I’ll brick my board if I attempt this. I just thought I’d share it for people who are more knowledgeable and/or brave than me.

Posted in Off Topic, Technology | Top Of Page

One Response to “SSD Performance with TrueCrypt”

  1. SW says:
    August 25, 2012 at 6:50 am

    I have been running an encrypted SSD drive for almost 2 years now and have been really happy with the performance. My laptops almost 4yrs old. I didn’t run benchmarks though before encrypting. Whats important to me is how does it perform day to day? So far its been great. On my old hard drive (the spinning kind) it used to take about 6 minutes to FULLY boot up my machine. With an SSD it now takes about 50 seconds…this is with encryption, all my applications installed and everything customised. Heres whats really cool, Windows 7 still feels quick even after running this setup for almost 2 years! Usually after some time people rebuild their machines as they get really slow…I have no such plans with an SSD drive.

    If you really worried about performance due to encryption you should get yourself a machine that supports AES-NI in the CPU. This allows encryption to happen in hardware rather than software which is much faster. FYI: my laptop doesn’t support AES-NI and I’m still really happy with the performace.

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