Truecrypt speed

Truecrypt is a disk encryption tool that can either make an encrypted file and treat it as a hard drive or encrypt an entire hard drive.

Lots of searching, little I found about Truecrypt encryption and decryption speed (including volume format times) for hard drives so I figured id post the speeds I got.

OS: windows xp sp3
Drive: western digital caviar green 1 TB 32 mb cache
Computer: e6600 quad core/2gb ram
Version: Truecrypt 6.2a
Algorithm: AES 256
Hash: ripemd160

Test 1:
931 GB file container on an NTFS partition.
Volume format time: 18 hours 32 min
Volume Format Speed: Started at 48MB/s, ramped down to 8 MB/s progressively
Regular Write Speed: 8-14 MB/s


Test 2:
932 GB NTFS partition, using encrypt partition option
Volume format time: 13 Hours 54 min
Volume Format Speed: Started at 55MB/s ramped down to 13.9MB/s progressively
Regular Write Speed: 14-16 MB/s

Truecrypt Speed Tips

After testing on Windows XP sp3, i tried every combination of the settings in 'My Computer > Properties > advanced > performance settings advanced'

Windows Truecyrypt speed Tried with system cache as priority, and background applications-- its the fastest of the combinations for a server writing data to a truecrypt volume.

Conclusion

Clearly encrypting a partition with truecrypt is a faster method than a file container when used with the setup above.