EXT4 LUKS dm-crypt, eCryptfs, Fscrypt Encryption Benchmarks For A USB 3.0 HDD

Written by Michael Larabel in Storage on 29 June 2018 at 04:32 PM EDT. Page 1 of 3. 4 Comments.

A few weeks back I posted benchmarks of EXT4 fscrypt vs. eCryptfs vs. LUKS dm-crypt benchmarks for showing the EXT4 file-system performance encryption performance for these kernel-based approaches. That testing was done with a SATA 3.0 SSD while in this article is a look at the performance in another popular choice: if using a USB 3.0 external enclosure with a hard drive.

For your viewing pleasure today are some EXT4 encryption benchmarks when running these disk benchmarks off a USB HDD setup. The drive in use was a Seagate Barracuda Compute 4TB SATA 3.0 HDD. This 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s drive with 64MB cache in 4TB storage capacity retails for around $100 USD at popular Internet retailers like NewEgg.

The Seagate HDD was housed within an Amazon Basics 3.5-inch SATA HDD enclosure with USB 3.0 support. Each time during the three encryption tests and then the stock (non-encrypted) benchmarks the EXT4 partition was freshly formatted and mounted with the stock mount options. Tests were done using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with its stock Linux 4.15 kernel.

The Ubuntu 18.04 test system was an Intel Core i7 8700K with 16GB DDR4, ASUS PRIME Z370-A motherboard, Intel Optane SSD as the host OS drive and the Amazon enclosure with Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD connected via USB 3.0.

See the earlier EXT4 encryption benchmarks for additional data while this is complementary data for those wondering about EXT4 encrypted performance on a USB HDD, largely to satisfy the reader request of a premium patron. All of these Linux storage benchmarks were carried out using the Phoronix Test Suite.


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