Very bad performance on NVME SSD

[stylersnico]

Hi,

Please don't take that as a complain, I only wish to help improve the software so I can use it.

I achieve very bad performance on Windows 10 LTSB 2016 with a Samsung EVO 960 250Gb and Veracrypt AES encryption:

Before :

After :

My hardware :

I7 7700k @ stock
16Gb Corsair DDR4
Samsung 960 Evo 250Gb with up to date Samsung NVME driver
Windows 10 LTSB 2016 up to date
Veracrypt 1.19 64 bits

Veracrypt Benchmark :

How can I manage to get close performance to non encrypted drive ? Is this even possible ?

Thanks and best regards,
Nicolas

It is problem not only for SSD.
I got the same problem with 2.5'' SSD and HDD with hardware RAID0.
Very low IOPS... 3-10 times less depending on hardware.
Common symptom: writing is less affected than reading.

Due to this issue CPU speed does not make a lot of sense to estimate how fast disk encryption will be.
So it would be very good if somebody can help to at least understand the reason.

UPDATE

I had to switch my storage system to DiskCryptor solution due to this issue.
It has approximately the same speed as unencrypted volume.
Hardware HDD RAID0 with on-board RAM cache gives me 10 times more read IOPS and +170 MB/s for linear read speed. Single SSD setup has 8 times more IOPS and + 90 MB/s for linear read.
So I can say it is 98% of "raw" speed.

The only drawback of DiskCryptor for me is no audits.
But I cannot accept so dramatic speed regression even if VeraCrypt is successor of TC and it was audited.
I read some opinions that TC was also slow on fast SSD disks. So I afraid it is some architecture problem initially created in TC.

[RcTomcat]

Is there any news on this matter?
It seems the iops still decrease drasticly.

[stylersnico]

@RcTomcat Unfortunatly I think it's not gonna change.
If you want strong encryption it's the price to pay :/

[InSys]

No news on this task? I have the same problem:

Without encryption (Windows 10, samsung ssd 960 evo m2 500gb):

With encryption (AES, mounted file container)

As you can see in the screenshots - the speed is less than 10-20 times. read more

Are there ways to solve this problem?

[304NotModified]

@InSys I'm curious how DiskCryptor performs on your system.

[tomasz1986]

I have the exact same issue, just on regular SATA SSDs.

DiskCryptor and BitLocker both perform very well (maybe ~5-10% decrease in the disk I/O), but performance with VeraCrypt is just abysmal. And yes, it is noticeable in normal workload, especially when operating on many small files at once. For this reason I have been using BitLocker for now (because DiskCryptor seems abandoned and does not support GPT).

I do not have top-notch hardware here but still... (AMD A10-7860K, 16GB RAM, 2 x SanDisk x110 256GB, Windows 10 LTSB 2016).

[InSys]

@304NotModified

Comparison of VeraCrypt and DiskCryptor on SSD:

As you can see, the performance is practically not degraded by DiskCryptor, but on VeraCrypt the performance drops in many times.

Click to view comparison of VeraCrypt and DiskCryptor on HDD

In order not to create a real HDD partition, I used a standard windows virtual disk real placed on single HDD: The degradation in performance on single HDD is not noticeable.

[nshtg]

Is there any effort to fix those ridiculous performance penaltys? Affect normal SSDs aswell not only NVMe ones.

[valnar1]

I noticed the same thing on a new laptop I planned to encrypt. I've loved TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt for a while now, but due to time constraints had to buy BestCrypt. I hope the devs get this figured out.

@tomasz1986

because DiskCryptor seems abandoned and does not support GPT

Why do you need GPT if you do not have partition more than 2TB?
Even large array are possible with RAID controllers (including integrated RAID).
Just create 2 disks: 1st - MBR (for booting, small up to 2TB), 2nd - GPT (any size).

[dartraiden]

Why do you need GPT

GPT is required for disabling CSM, And disabled CSM is required for SecureBoot.

[NameTheJew]

BUMP.
Is this still an issue?
Will using VeraCrypt FDE seriously drop write speeds down to 1MB/s?
Is there a Fix?

Also how is Trim and Provisioning effected when software FDE is implemented?

[CrownVic2]

I just encrypted my system drive with VeraCrypt (ver 1.23) on the almost identical HW configuration as listed in the first post. I see the same slow read speed in Samsung Magician and in CrystalDiskMark. Sequential read is down to 20% . Bitlocker compared to no-encryption is almost identical.

Now the good news. When I measured the real-time for programs to open, there wasn't much of a difference. Lightroom and Photoshop both take approx 2 seconds to be ready, just like with no encryption. Starting another windows 10 from Oracle VM VirtualBox takes 21.5 seconds with no encryption and 23 seconds with Veracrypt.

All programs are installed on my Samsung EVO 960 500GB and the startup time for each program is measured after a fresh system reboot.

[valnar1]

I know it costs money, but I'm very happy with BestCrypt. Also, the older DiskCryptor works great for a MBR SSD if you don't mind disabling UEFI and all the modern settings.