Solved MiniTool Shows 100% usage on disks!

pseymour · Jul 29, 2025

Fair enough. And for clarification or whatever, I don't think Microsoft should encrypt home users' disks without telling them. That's only slightly less dumb than the automatic OneDrive thing, but they didn't ask me.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 29, 2025

pseymour said:
Fair enough. And for clarification or whatever, I don't think Microsoft should encrypt home users' disks without telling them. That's only slightly less dumb than the automatic OneDrive thing, but they didn't ask me.

Well, we in 100% agreement there. It's one thing to be offered the option, quite another to have it jammed in some orifice without asking.

I had never seen a disk come with encryption before. All the Windows 11 Pro installs I have done from scratch didn't encrypt my drives without asking, so I was a little taken aback when I encountered encryption enabled, more so because it used to be Windows Home didn't even offer it! :think:

I think the real problem with many users is they won't understand the need to be very careful to save their recovery keys and shoot themselves in the foot. Most of the folks I know with computers don't even understand the need for basic backup, never mind stuff like encrypted disks! My wife and daughter would be totally lost if I weren't there to provide some computer guidance.

spapakons · Jul 29, 2025

Yes there should be some screen warning and let you consent before locking all your disks. Also the overhead should be minimum since the disk is unlocked once before copying many files, not on every single file. Also I think the disk is encrypted once every write, not for every single file.

Sheikh · Jul 29, 2025

Fabler2 said:
Drive Encryption is on automatically in the Home version of Win 11

Turn On or Off Device Encryption in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off device encryption on a Windows 11 PC. Device encryption is a Windows feature that enables BitLocker encryption automatically for the Operating System drive and fixed drives. It’s particularly beneficial for everyday users who want to ensure...

www.elevenforum.com

do we have any evidence that bitlocker or drive encryption caused performance drop?

spapakons · Jul 29, 2025

Sheikh said:
do we have any evidence that bitlocker or drive encryption caused performance drop?

With officially Windows 11 compliant computers the performance impact should be negligible. For very old unsupported computers that you have to bypass compatibility check to install there might be some performance drop, but not too much to slow down the whole PC. Thankfully unsupported computers don't enable BitLocker automatically.

Sheikh · Jul 29, 2025

spapakons said:
With officially Windows 11 compliant computers the performance impact should be negligible. For very old unsupported computers that you have to bypass compatibility check to install there might be some performance drop, but not too much to slow down the whole PC. Thankfully unsupported computers don't enable BitLocker automatically.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/iibwmn/comment/g381rea

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 29, 2025

Sheikh said:
do we have any evidence that bitlocker or drive encryption caused performance drop?

We have more evidence that it does cause a performance hit than any that claims it doesn't.

Here's some pretty conclusive tests. Note that this impact would be worse if you don't have a pretty high-end processor, they were running this test on an Core i9-12900K equipped machine.

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

BitLocker software encryption slows performance. Here's how to fix it.

www.tomshardware.com

Sheikh · Jul 29, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
We have more evidence that it does cause a performance hit than any that claims it doesn't.

Here's some pretty conclusive tests. Note that this impact would be worse if you don't have a pretty high-end processor, they were running this test on an Core i9-12900K equipped machine.

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

BitLocker software encryption slows performance. Here's how to fix it.

www.tomshardware.com

So, it's better to deactivate if you don't have any security concerns!

pseymour · Jul 29, 2025

Right, take one paragraph out of that whole article to try to prove a point.

But let's look at the only paragraph where the 45% percent is actually mentioned in context.

"Curiously, write IOPS [they're referring to random writes] at QD1 again were slightly higher with OPAL than without — perhaps some caching or command batching is happening in the Samsung controller. But the critical aspect is that software BitLocker dropped random write performance by 45% compared to hardware BitLocker."

So to be clear and fair, and not try to confirm one's existing bias.... they're talking about SOFTWARE encryption, in ONE test mode only, in ONE benchmarking program only. With OPAL, the speed was actually faster, but let's not mention that, right?

Sheikh · Jul 29, 2025

pseymour said:
Right, take one paragraph out of that whole article to try to prove a point. But let's look at the only paragraph where the 45% percent is actually mentioned in context.

"Curiously, write IOPS [they're referring to random writes] at QD1 again were slightly higher with OPAL than without — perhaps some caching or command batching is happening in the Samsung controller. But the critical aspect is that software BitLocker dropped random write performance by 45% compared to hardware BitLocker."

So to be clear and fair, and not try to confirm one's existing bias.... they're talking about SOFTWARE encryption, in ONE test mode only, in ONE benchmarking program only. With OPAL, the speed was actually faster, but let's not mention that, right?

You are right, but when I look at the issue logically, I see that more resources are being spent to encrypt the information, and a decrease in speed is natural. I would really like to know what percentage of impact it has, and as you said, you can't draw a general conclusion from just one test.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 29, 2025

pseymour said:
Right, take one paragraph out of that whole article to try to prove a point. But let's look at the only paragraph where the 45% percent is actually mentioned in context.

"Curiously, write IOPS [they're referring to random writes] at QD1 again were slightly higher with OPAL than without — perhaps some caching or command batching is happening in the Samsung controller. But the critical aspect is that software BitLocker dropped random write performance by 45% compared to hardware BitLocker."

So to be clear and fair, and not try to confirm one's existing bias.... they're talking about SOFTWARE encryption, in ONE test mode only, in ONE benchmarking program only. With OPAL, the speed was actually faster, but let's not mention that, right?

Well, now who's taking things out of context? That's the title of article, I never claimed that 45%, I just posted the link. However, without the tuning that an option that a vast majority of folks won't even be aware of, their encryption will be software based since that's the Windows default! Yes, you and I know that in some cases you have hardware encryption, but the great unwashed masses most likely don't have any idea. Also, not all environments even offer hardware encryption.

pseymour · Jul 29, 2025

I'm not sure what you're so defensive about, except you did tout it as "conclusive." I took the 45% from their Neowin-like headline and found the places where they mentioned it. I did also speed-read the whole article, as I've seen that article before.

Edit: All I'm saying is this stuff is nuanced, like lots of things. You can't just say there's a performance hit or overhead. Even the article you posted says disks are faster in some situations with encryption on.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 29, 2025

pseymour said:
I'm not sure what you're so defensive about, except you did tout it as "conclusive." I took the 45% from their Neowin-like headline and found the places where they mentioned it. I did also speed-read the whole article, as I've seen that article before.

Edit: All I'm saying is this stuff is nuanced, like lots of things. You can't just say there's a performance hit or overhead. Even the article you posted says disks are faster in some situations with encryption on.

All I said it was it was conclusive that encryption could have a performance impact. That is 100% true AFAIK for software encryption.

I agree that hardware encryption is the way to go, but it'll never be faster with the default software encryption which is the Windows default.

You're correct, if you know about the configuration options and have disks that offer industry standard hardware encryption configuration, then there probably no measurable impact to enabling encryption. As you correctly point out, they even picked up a couple percentage points with hardware encryption enabled. If the disks support hardware encryption, that works fine.

pseymour · Jul 29, 2025

Sounds like we mostly agree. That's rare for me. :)

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 29, 2025

pseymour said:
Sounds like we mostly agree. That's rare for me. :)

Mostly.

For most home users, I still don't see the sense in enabling encryption. It's just one more complexity that can later bite you in the butt if you don't understand it.

Solved MiniTool Shows 100% usage on disks!

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putting the mental back in experimental

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