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! 
do we have any evidence that bitlocker or drive encryption caused performance drop?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
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.
We have more evidence that it does cause a performance hit than any that claims it doesn't.
So, it's better to deactivate if you don't have any security concerns!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
But let's look at the only paragraph where the 45% percent is actually mentioned in context.
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.Right, take one paragraph out of that whole article to try to prove a point.
"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.Right, take one paragraph out of that whole article to try to prove a point.
"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?
All I said it was it was conclusive that encryption could have a performance impact. That is 100% true AFAIK for software encryption.
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.
