I have a question about Truecrypt-encrypted HDDs

[Dissemble2Discover]

I'm am uncertain about how or if encryption on a boot drive would affect performance after the encryption code has been entered in?

For example, I have a 1TB HDD that has Windows 7 Home installed on it. On this drive, it requires a truecrypt password to unlock the drive in order for it to start booting. After I enter the password, it boots and all, but my concern now is if it needs to further decrypt other files now that I unlocked the drive for full use?

It just needs one password and the whole drive is unlocked. Does it need to further decrypt other files after the drive has been unlocked?

I'm using a 3-cipher encryption method for the drive just to boot into it. All the files are unlocked after booting in.

Since Truecrypt also has an option to mount encrypted drives while using a different HDD, would I get the same performance as a non-encrypted drive after it's unlocked? But the only difference is being this drive is a storage center for games, documents, etc, the works.


Would it make sense to have another HDD as my boot drive and use the encrypted HDD as a data storage after I mount the drive within the operating system? Will I be able to run programs after it's mounted from the unecrypted drive and NOT suffer performance degration?

 

[Eickst]

Yes it needs to continually encrypt/decrypt information written to the disk. It is not an *unlock* in the way you are thinking of it.

Yes it affects performance, but that is more dependent on your CPU than your hard drive.

The only way to mitigate the performance loss is with a drive with a built in AES module, but I do not know if truecrypt will work with those anyway.

 

[adoch]

Or a CPU with built in AES.