If you have Windows 11 installed on your machine and are using an SSD, your SSD may be running “slow”. Indeed, by default on Win11, BitLocker is activated, which puts a strain on your SSD’s performance.
Windows 11, watch out for your SSD ‘s performance!
To check the impact of BitLocker on your SSD ‘s performance, Tom’s Hardware conducted a battery of tests. Armed with a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro (link), a Core i9 12900K and 32GB RAM, they were able to measure its impact on SSD throughput and latency.
The results are not long in coming, as the impact is sometimes massive, depending on the case. A first look at CrystalDiskMark shows that random write performance reaches 76,935 IOPS using hardware encryption. As soon as you switch to Windows encryption, you’re down to 41,694 IOPS- BOOM! 45% less performance! In random read mode, however, the impact on performance seems less significant. Tom’s Hardware reports 24,706 IOPS with hardware encryption versus 19,603 IOPS with Windows encryption, so the impact is 26%.
Now, BitLocker will not systematically impact the performance of your storage media. In some cases, such as sequential read/write, all is well. However, on large files (50 GB), the loss is estimated at 11%, with throughputs ranging from 1,647 MB/s to 1,435 MB/s on DiskBench. Similarly, latency increases from 12.91 µs to 23.90 µs (random writing on CrystalDiskMark).
In short, to check whether your BitLocker is active on your computer, a simple command in the command prompt ensures that it is: “manage-bde -status”. If so, “XTS-AES” should appear. If this hasn’t bothered you so far, you can leave it as it is. If not, disabling it and enabling hardware encryption will boost performance on your SSD… Provided your SSD supports it.
