Does anyone know how long it should take to do a full disk encryption on a 8 TB drive using LUKS?
I’ve got an 8 TB Seagate Desktop Expansion.
Using bitlocker on W10 it took ~ 24 hours.
But with LUKS on Ubuntu it’s been going 7 days, and it’s still not done. WTF?
I’ve used the same password on both runs.
Both was with full disk erasure, so it was completely overwritten both times.
I’m not aware of any way to check the progress on ubuntu. The gnome disk utility is working, but not giving any progress status…
There’s a good chance that it’s an smr drive. IDK, but it’s a 8 TB cheap seagate external drive. Sooo I think it is.
But that didn’t seem to be a problem for windows though?
I’m also considering this. On the box, it says Windows compatibility. But not MacOS or Linux. Maybe W10 is smr aware?
Another thing, on W10, I can see smart data using crystaldiskinfo.
But on Ubuntu, using GSmartcontrol, I can’t get any smart data. It says smart is disabled, and trying to enable it results in an error.
Maybe it’s the sata to usb controller?
The drive has +1000 hours at this point, and have been filled up with a partial backup of my nas. It has been encrypted before with LUKS, and it took 1-2 weeks or something.
Then I ended up having to format it again due to an error on my part…
I just remembered, I cant make a new partition on the drive in Ubuntu. I can format an existing partition, but not delete and create a new one. That’s only possible in W10.
Maybe it is the usb controller in the drive enclosure that’s the problem?
HDD do you have connected via SATA? Or via USB3.0 or 2.0? The nominal speed will depend on the interface, especially as slow as usb2.0
Remove the hdd and connect directly to SATA and then encrypt.
The disk is empty, right? Maybe try to stop and try Veracrypt what time it will be. Seven days you say? Something probably is not right, because time seems abstract, unless you have data on this disk, but even then, it takes a long time …
You can also try to write the disk with zeros and only do encryption on empty sectors. But wouldn’t it be better to make an encrypted container on the partition that supports W10 and Linux? And have access to encrypted data from linux and windows?
Are you encrypting an already existing filesystem or am I missing something here? iirc LUKS just throws its headers on the disk and that’s pretty much all for “init”.
Usb 3.0. It’s in the original enclousure. I have considered ripping it out if there and connect via sata. It has a 1000 hours on the clock. So I don’t expect it to die prematurely. (Shucking it will destroy the enclosure = warranty gone).
Fresh format to ext4 + luks encryption. Set to overwrite the disk.
I cant delete and create a new partition on linux though. Only format an existing one. Gnome disk utility has the options greyed out if I delete the partition and try to create a new one.
No problem deleting and making new partitions on W10.
I also can’t get smart data on ubuntu. Only on W10. I think it might be the sata/usb bridge in the external enclosure.
Propably. But it’s only purpose is backup. I use rsync for that. And the only windows pcs is my W10 gaming pc + W XP retro gaming pc. The rest is linux
The disk is partioned on windows, cause I can’t create a new partition on ubuntu for some reason. On ubuntu I then reformat the partition to ext4+luks and set it to overwrite.
I think I’m gonna shuck it tomorrow so I can hook it up with sata and see if it’s the usb adaptor in the enclousure that’s the problem.
Oh, I remembered wrong about the time it took for W10 to encrypt the disk.
Using the new bitlocker standard (xts-aes), full disk overwrite on a freshly formatted disk to nfts, it took between 10 and 14 hours.
The time differnce is because I wasn’t monitoring it constantly. Just checking in every now and then.
I removed the drive from the enclosure today and it’s an Barracuda Compute, which is smr. That probably explain the slow encryption time with luks and overwrite.
Starting the overwrite and monitoring the drive with dstat, shows good speed at the beginning, and then slowing to crippling speeds, which must be when it’s done with the cmr buffer and reaches the smr part.
It’s connected with sata now, and now I can create partitions and see smart data on Linux.
I still don’t get how Bitlocker can encrypt the drive so much faster. I set it to encrypt the entire disk, and not just the part used…
Must be the enclosures usb controller that’s optimized for Windows or something.
The speed difference could be due to hardware offloading of encryption
“BitLocker supports offloading encryption to encrypted hard drives.” [1]
This may or may not be desirable depending on the drive [2]
I can’t include links but if you search
[1] Overview of BitLocker Device Encryption in Windows 10
[2] ADV180028 | Guidance for configuring BitLocker to enforce software encryption
