Tested: Windows 11 Pro's On-By-Default Encryption Slows SSDs Up to 45%

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tomshardware.com

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

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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:

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/flaws-in-self-encrypting-ssds-let-attackers-bypass-disk-encryption/

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?

It's SSD dependent and implementation quality may vary between manufacturers and models. Some may not actually protect your data all that well from someone trying to access your data, hence Microsoft defaulting to software they know works.

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.

The original article contains 2,953 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 93%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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.

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 T2 chip is only in Intel Macs. ARM Macs have the Secure Enclave too but it’s part of the main SoC, not a dedicated chip.

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.

You aren't who they are making computers for. They want fast encryption, not something customizable like Linux.

Apple's philosophy is "it just works." Not "yeah it works eventually after you figure out what kind of encryption you want and compromise speed for the sake of security."

Like I get what you are saying. For a power user, it is not ideal. But for most people, Apple's hardware solution is fantastic.

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.

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.

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.

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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.