Tested: Windows 11 Pro's On-By-Default Encryption Slows SSDs Up to 45%
Tested: Windows 11 Pro's On-By-Default Encryption Slows SSDs Up to 45%
BitLocker software encryption slows performance. Here's how to fix it.
Tested: Windows 11 Pro's On-By-Default Encryption Slows SSDs Up to 45%::Windows 11 Pro defaults to BitLocker being turned on, using software encryption. We've tested the Samsung 990 Pro with hardware encryption to show how the various modes impact performance, and how muc
Just a reminder for everyone, BitLocker is only available in Windows Pro and higher versions. Most Windows PCs available in stores are running Windows Home which doesn't have this and so isn't affecting most users.
If you are running Windows Pro, you are most likely wanting and needing that security. But odds are, unless you are using a work issued device, you are most likely running Windows Home.
I'm using windows pro, because of hyperv, and gpu virtualisation. And I don't need that security feature.
And windows pro still have some benefits. The group policy, tho most of the changes can still be made in the registry.
Then you can turn it off. It's on by default as the default user of Pro will want it off. But as there are some cases that some people won't want/need it so it can be turned off. The average user of Pro will be a workplace office setting.
Another case that it wouldn't be used in is video editing as encrypting large files just wouldn't be worth the effort and time. But again, this isn't where most average Pro users will be. You can always find a case where X of anything doesn't support someone's needs, but companies like this need to look at it and ask "What does the average user want?" Not "What does everyone in every use case need?"
I use windows pro for personal because home doesn't have bitlocker. You could totally upgrade using MAS too.
Windows 11 Home does have BitLocker, it's just a very simplified version of BitLocker without most of the options. Like it's basically just on or off in the settings, no way to manually backup the key or anything else. But changing certain things will trigger the enter BitLocker key screen at boot.
That's Device Encryption, which isn't the same.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/difference-between-device-encryption-and-bitlocker
Wait… I’ve never been a windows user, so forgive my ignorance… is full disk encryption really not available to all windows users? And most people buy the home version that lacks it?
I’m using Enterprise, because it has less overall bloatware.
Deliberately using software encryption mode is slow; no shocker there. Their same testing showed no significant difference when hardware encryption mode was used.
There's a reason they default to software though, the hardware can't be trusted:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/bitlocker-encrypts-self-encrypting-ssds,40504.html
Those people were actually worse off than anticipated because Microsoft set up BitLocker to leave these self-encrypting drives to their own devices. This was supposed to help with performance--the drives could use their own hardware to encrypt their contents rather than using the CPU--without compromising the drive's security. Now it seems the company will no longer trust SSD manufacturers to keep their customers safe by themselves.
Linked from that article:
Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have revealed today vulnerabilities in some solid-state drives (SSDs) that allow an attacker to bypass the disk encryption feature and access the local data without knowing the user-chosen disk encryption password.
The vulnerabilities only affect SSD models that support hardware-based encryption, where the disk encryption operations are carried out via a local built-in chip, separate from the main CPU.
Sure, but I suspect this is the real motivation for the article:
Windows 11 Pro force-enables the software version of BitLocker during installation, without providing a clear way to opt out
It sounds like many people may be using software encryption without realizing it, if Windows 11 Pro uses it by default.
How does one use hardware encryption? Is that a feature that is ssd dependent?
Do we have comparable numbers for LUKS to contrast this with?
idk about the drive from the article but I get about 1GiB/s random reads with Luks on my wd sn 750 1tb and about 2 GiB/s without
sequential is almost identical
I wonder how this compares to Veracrypt doing the same thing.
That is a life changing program up there with 7zip, gimp, and notepad++
Its hard to find a better paid replacement
I mean, Veracrypt takes a while to mount a vault, because it basically has to dig through all the layers of encryption. Veracrypt is great for a lot of things, but speed isn’t the main consideration when you’re dealing with encryption.
We're not talking about mount times here, but read/write speeds. They might be slow too, but that's a different issue.
I'm no expert but as far as I know the mounting takes time, but once it's done, you got to deal with a bit added CPU time, but the read/write stays largely the same.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While many SSDs come with hardware-based encryption, which does all the processing directly on the drive, Windows 11 Pro force-enables the software version of BitLocker during installation, without providing a clear way to opt out.
While we have results for higher queue depths, note that the QD1 numbers are far more meaningful in the real world, as this is the most common type of file access in typical operating system environments... and that's where software BitLocker impacted performance the most.
Lower latency delivers snappier performance in day-to-day use, and it's the primary reason the industry at large has moved from slow rotating hard drives to faster SSDs.
Given that this extra layer of latency, albeit at varying degrees, will also be added to slower types of SSDs, like QLC or low-tier drives, this could have a much bigger real-world impact in some systems.
Windows 11 disk caching might be a factor there, but QD256 is basically fantasy land for storage workloads (remember, low queue depths are the most common), so we don't put too much weight on it.
There's a curious "bump" with the 990 Pro that we've noted before on the read speeds, but write performance shows a smoother line with the software BitLocker trailing up until the 256KiB block size.
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How bad do Macs slow down with encryption? Or can you even turn it off? They do have a dedicated chip, and section of chip, to handle encryption.
They don't slow down with encryption to any real degree.
Even before Apple added their dedicated T or M chips, they used the AES instruction set in Intel CPUs for hardware acceleration and the performance impact was within the margin of error (3%) https://archive.techarp.com/showarticle0037.html?artno=877&pgno=1
I don't know the answer to this, but somehow I trust apple more to get this right. They make money primarily on hardware, so they have a vested interest in making sure it works properly.
Edit - lol apparently I am wrong
Except for the fact that I'm right. Apparently I struck some kind of nerve. Apple is good at hardware. I use a pixel and I can admit this. They know what they are doing.
You’re right, but not for the reason you’re citing. Apple has its own T2 Secure Enclave which performs encryption. Microsoft relies on the TPM for hosting the keys, but does not use AFAIK hardware encryption and thus slows down significantly.
This article: https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/03/whats-the-overhead-of-using-apfs-encryption/ shows that for an external drive the overhead on MacOS for encryption is insignificant (less than 5%) in most cases. That’s significantly better than Microsoft.
The issue here is software, not hardware. A Samsung 990 is a Samsung 990.
doing hardware encryption is not doing encryption right. the user is prone to end with encryption that has unpatchable security issues. of course that it is faster, but if I'm doing encryption speed is not a concern. I just wanted to keep it secure. And software encryption let's me choose the software and algorithm to do that. Apple doesn't.
they're downvoting you because your logic was "apple does hardware so they must know better" and trusting a big corp to do your encryption better is kind of innocent.
anyway, seeing that they do hardware encryption, they are right to downvote you. I'm not with Microsoft either, bitlocker is probably backdoored, but hey, at least you're not trusting your hardware manufacturer to actually maintain an up-to-date secure firmware.
I turned this off as soon as I setup the PC, there's zero need for this on desktops. Once again, Microsoft's making a stupid move.
Permanently Deleted
It's largely useful on mobile devices because you can easily forget them somewhere and all a tech savvy person has to do to get the data is remove the HDD (if it's a laptop), or if it's integrated, reset the admin password with something like NT Offline Password Reset. Smartphones are another can of worms I won't get into, but I'm sure you understand.
With a desktop, it's highly unlikely you're carrying it around and will forget it some place. The only way someone can get the drive is to break into your residence and physically remove the drive, and as someone else said: if someone is breaking into your residence to get a HDD out of your PC, you have bigger problems.
Also, is always encrypting drives even a good or desirable thing for most users?
I don't know the details, but what if someone forgets the password, or some PC components get broken, but they still want their data put of there?
Disk encryption is something that should be a choice, opt-in.
It's not available to most users.
BitLocker is only available on Windows Pro and above, almost every home computer you buy is running Windows Home edition. Mostly businesses run Pro versions, and it's for extra security features (like Domains and User controls).
In truth, this issue isn't effecting most people, and the few that do are the ones that most likely want and are willing to sacrifice the speed for security.
but what if someone forgets the password, or some PC components get broken, but they still want their data put of there?
That is why backup of your data is a necessity regardless of encryption or not.
I'd argue it's similar to the debate over whether HTTPS is needed for most sites (it is and there's little excuse not to at this point). It also matches what is expected from other devices like phones that are encrypted by default now.
As for data loss: for Home users at least, a recovery key is backed up to the user's Microsoft account.
Well that's just horrendous
What method would be the best to encrypt a Windows 11 Pro workstation? I had my PC at home but now I got an office so I have to rely on its security that it won't be broken into.
I am a one man band and I work in video production. If someone would steal my PC/Synology NAS, they would access to my videos and all the invoices/client details. If I would use Bitlocker, I guess I would expect a lot lower performance when editing.
BitLocker can be configured to use the encryption provided by the SSD, so you can still use it, you just need to make sure that the SSD model you have supports it and doesn't have any flaws/insecurities in its implementation.
I'm not sure what options are available for that NAS though.
Thanks! I have a 2TB 970 EVO Plus, when the projects are done, I copy them to a 10TB HDD and from there they go to the cloud and NAS. So I would have to encrypt multiple drives/devices.
Please turn it off with a bootable linux usb mean u can hack it in 10mins flat
Blud does not know what BitLocker is
It prevents me from renaming a copy of cmd to sethc