Re: How much does disk encryption add to boot time?

[George Bailey <gbailey () IVYTECH EDU>]

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Roger,
 
I have recently looked at full disk encryption, on my Dell Precision 670 (beefy system), I notice no difference in the 
actual boot time.  
 

Based on our results, Full Disk Encryption products had significantly little impact on performance. Based on a Pentium 
4/3.0Ghz system with a 7200 SATA hard disk, the largest performance hits occurred during large file transfers. However, 
the average write-time increased by only 6.5% on a 1.99GB file. This seems to be a bit higher than past research on the 
topic. According to Saarinen (2004), the average write-performance time using AES 128-bit encryption in CBC mode was 
less than one percent in his experiments. However, the same tests yielded an increase of 12% on read-performance. 
Taking both cases as extremes, the result to the average end-user is negligible. 

 
Virtual system start-up
 

Virtual image shutdown time

File copy 

 
 
 
I hope this helps.  Feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions.
 

- --gb

- ----------------------
George Bailey, CISSP
Information Security
Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana
Indianapolis, Indiana

PH: 317.921.4526






- -----Original Message-----
From: Roger Safian [mailto:r-safian () NORTHWESTERN EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 10:58 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] How much does disk encryption add to boot time?

At 09:43 AM 5/2/2007, David Millar put fingers to keyboard and wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with roughly how much additional time it
> takes to boot a typical late-model office laptop (or desktop)?  We
> aren't talking hours here I hope.

Assuming you're talking whole disk encryption here, I never noticed any real difference to the boot time.  I'm sure it 
must add something but if the overhead was to high it would likely reduce the numbers using these products.


- --
Roger A. Safian
r-safian () northwestern edu (email) public key available on many key servers.
(847) 491-4058   (voice)
(847) 467-6500   (Fax) "You're never too old to have a great childhood!"



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