Use Bitlocker or not?

[ximoosea]

Just curious how many people choose to use bitlocker or not. The SP3 could easily be stolen but with it such a closed up system, I would assume most thieves would be more interested in reformating the harddrive versus trying to tear up the SP3 and extract the harddrive to read the data. Thus, is a Windows password secure enough to prevent this scenario?

I have read that Bitlocker does not have a noticeable performance hit, thus, are are any good reasons not to use it? Does it play well with most software?

Thanks.

 

[unruledboy]

encryption - Developers: How does BitLocker affect performance? - Stack Overflow
encryption - Developers: How does BitLocker affect performance? - Stack Overflow

T7300 2.0GHz and Kingston V100 64gb SSD the results are

Bitlocker off ---> on

Sequential read 243 MB/s ---> 140 MB/s

Sequential write 74.5 MB/s ---> 51 MB/s

Random read 176 MB/s ---> 100 MB/s

Random write, and the 4KB speeds are almost identical.

Clearly the processor is the bottleneck in this case

 

[unruledboy]

AnandTech | Hardware Accelerated BitLocker Encryption: Microsoft Windows 8 eDrive Investigated with Crucial M500
AnandTech | Hardware Accelerated BitLocker Encryption: Microsoft Windows 8 eDrive Investigated with Crucial M500

PCMark 7 - Raw System Storage Score
Unencrypted BitLocker Enabled Perf Impact
Crucial M500 240GB (eDrive) 4644 4586 -1.2%
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB 6195 5336 -13.9%

Peak Performance - 4KB Random Write (8GB LBA Space, QD32)
Unencrypted BitLocker Enabled Perf Impact
Crucial M500 240GB (eDrive) 63334.8 IOPS 62865.8 IOPS -0.7%
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB 88911.3 IOPS 63097.53 IOPS -29.0%

 

[kevinlevrone]

You can use BitLocker only on a subset of all your data.

For example, I have 3 partitions: one for system, one for work information and one for personal stuff. Only the work partition is bitlocker-enabled because it contains confidential information. This way BitLocker does not slow down the system at all, while still providing protection on the data that needs protection. I don't care if anyone gains access to my pictures, but I do care if someone steals the confidential work information.

 

[diamond.g]

My SP3 came with bitlocker turned on by default (on the c drive). I think my ATIV 500T did as well. The performance hit isn't as noticeable for light duty stuff. Though I imagine if you did things that wrote tones of data to disk, you would want to turn it off.

 

[ximoosea]

Thanks all. I was not sure if it came enabled by default or not so it is nice that Diamond.g has confirmed that his did. Also I like Kevin's suggestion to partition and just enable Bitlocker with the data partition.

 

[jnjroach]

On any Connected Standby enabled machine it is required that Bitlocker be enabled OOB, the Recovery Key is stored online in your Microsoft Account unless it a Domain Joined Machine and the domain is configured to store the recovery key in Active Directory.

 

[puma]

I use it, I don't notice any performance hit. I am surprised by what unruledboy posted, those numbers point to a lot of overhead.

 

[null4end]

I use BitLocker on mine (company requirement) and it is totally seamless. If there is any sort of performance hit, it is imperceptible in daily use.

 

[Sit]

I use bitlocker on external usb hard drives. Thought being if they got stolen, at least the data encrypted.

Interesting specs from unruledboy on degradation due to bitlocker.