Endpoint Encryption

We are using HP's laptops (for example 8440P, 8540P, 8540W) which are equipped with SSD drives. SEE makes them run really slow when compared to unencrypted SSD drive and SSD drive crypted with Truecrypt. Do you have any idea, how to make drives faster (or is getting rid of SEE the best solution)?

Read/write rates measured with CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 on Windows 7:

SEE 8.2.0 encrypted SSD: Seq. read (MB/s) 45.84 Seq. write 38.98

Truecrypt eencrypted SSD: Seq. read (MB/s) 198.1 Seq. write 101.2

Unencrypted SSD: Seq. read (MB/s) 214.8 Seq. write 105.9

Hello Kimmjarv,

You mean to say copying data from SSD to HDD is taking time ?

As far as i know "CrystalDiskMark" is the thirdparty software which measures the copying speed (correct me if i am wrong)

The point is that we can't trust or go by third party evaluations.

Hello,

Thanks for the reply!

I mean that when Symantec Endpoint Encryption is in use, general reading and writing operations with SSD drive take much longer than with another encryption software we used earlier (Truecrypt). End user notices this since operating system starts slower and copying large file (on the same computer and disk drive) takes longer time.

You are right, "CrystalDiskMark" is third party software. It does not measure copying speed but write speed and read speed. Tests are done with three different size data packets.

I understand that you can't trust third party evaluations. I'm open for suggestions about more suitable speed test tool. However, all my measurements were taken with the same tool, with the same SSD drive and with the same computer (HP 8440P), so even if R/W speed result could be unreliable, the ratio between results should be correct. Measurements were also taken with HP 8540W's SSD drive and speed rate was slow also in this case.

One other thing noticed was that on multicore computer one CPU has very high load when SEE is in use. With Truecrypt and uncrypted drive CPU load was divided to all CPUs evenly. On Windows this was seen from task manager->resource monitor->CPU.

We are having same issue with Lenovo T420s and X220s (solid state drive), first we noticed audio distortion and now overall performance issue.

Does Symantec release any benchmark results they tested SEE on SSD?

I seen several reports from vedors like Samsung/Kingston all showing performance degrade on SSD with full disk encryption. http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/SSD/downloads/SamsungSSD_Encryption_Benchmarks_201011.pdf

 

Same topic on this forum as well:-

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/147941-encrypted-ssd-drive.html 

-NK

I've been asked to look into this on the behalf of my organization.  When using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1b x64 on Windows 7 on a computer encrypted with SEE 8.2.0 I can confirm it shows up to a 78% reduction in read/write performance.  However when running some boot time and logon time tests with a stop watch I don’t record that much of a performance degradation

In my tests the average boot time without encryption was 23.1s and with encryption it was 31.9s

In the testing scenario I was using a T410 with i5 and SEE 8.2.0 with AES-256.  I timed the duration from cold start to windows 7 ctrl+alt+del screen on an unencrypted computer, and the duration between hitting enter on the SEE 8.2.0 logon screen and the windows 7 legal notice on an encrypted computer (single sign on enabled).

For me it would be good to know if Symantec supports the AES-NI instruction set on the newer Intel processors, and if not when.  It would also be good to see what other kinds of HD performance tests others can come up with that don’t rely on CrystalDiskMark (in case there is some interoperability problems between it and SEE 8.2.0 for example).