Performance Boost with VeraCrypt?!

VeraCrypt – Free Open Source Storage Device Encryption
“with strong security for the paranoid!” – Their words!

Has anyone else noticed a performance boost in reading from and writing to a VeraCrypt encrypted storage device?

Let’s run some tests and see if there really is any difference.

Here are the specifications for the  test drive:

• Seagate 10TB SATA-III (6gbs) connected internally.
• Model ST10000NM0016-1TT01
• ReFS formatted.

Baseline Benchmark…

The VeraCrypt volume, mounted on the same hardware…

Those sequential reads and writes sure look a lot faster!

Hmm. Now, let’s try copy file in File Explorer on “install4.dat” (15.3GB).
Task Manager only reported ~230 MB/s writing to the destination drive.

The results show the File Explorer copy itself was much faster than the benchmark reported by CrystalDiskMark.

Robocopy reported 458.8 MB/s! This was a test file copying from a PCIe SSD to a 10TB 7200 RPM spinning rust bucket..

How is this possible?! I’m suspecting dram caching.. a larger test file is needed.