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Encrypted CloudDrive Overhead vs Unencrypted Overhead


lahma

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I'm testing out CloudDrive and so far it seems really great, but I just have a quick question. Since all data upload to cloud providers is "obfuscated", even when not encrypting the cloud drive, does that mean it is always being encrypted anyways (but instead of using a private key, it is instead using a public non-secret key)? The reason I'm asking, is I want to know if there is any overhead/performance difference when using an encrypted cloud drive vs using an unencrypted cloud drive. For data that I do not care about being particularly secure, I'm wondering if there is any benefit to using an unencrypted cloud drive. If it being encrypted regardless and there is going to be an equal amount of overhead either way, I will just go ahead and make all of my cloud drives encrypted. Thank you in advance!

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Yes, the data for most providers is obfuscated, using a relatively week encryption, that should be very light on resources.

 

However, full encryption will be a bit heavier on the CPU than an unencrypted drive, as it's using much stronger encryption.

 

Additionally, we use the Microsoft CNG API, meaning that even the full encryption should be faster and lighter than other similar tasks.   And specifically, if your CPU supports AES-NI, there should be very little impact to system performance, as this feature is designed to heavily optimize cryptographic calculations. 

 

 

 

Alex (the Developer) goes into more detail about how the encryption works here:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1269-full-drive-encryption/

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is there a way to see if hardware acceleration (AES-NI for example) is being used?  I'm curious if I can get a bit more performance by forcing that on or at least understand that this capability is already being used and to look elsewhere for performance increases.

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ironhead65,

 

You can do 1 of 2 things. You can either lookup the CPU your system is using ('Win+R', type 'msinfo32.exe', hit Enter - Look for the field named "Processor") and then google your CPU (if its intel, open the intel product information page) and see if its supports the instruction "AES-NI". 

 

Or, you can download an app such as CPU-Z ( http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html ) which will provide a list of instructions your processor supports. I would suggest downloading the portable version (provides a zip with a simple exe that you run instead of installing a whole application package). You can download the portable version (includes 32-bit and 64-bit executables) directly here: http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.80-en.zip . Once you open the application, you will see a field labeled "Instructions". As long as "AES" appears as 1 of the items in that list, it means your CPU supports the instruction that is needed.

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