Re: [SD4L-user] Slow container creation

[Stewart M. <smm...@gm...>]

On Sat, 2011-03-26 at 10:59 -0400, Stewart Millen wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-03-26 at 10:26 -0400, Stewart Millen wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2011-03-02 at 06:51 -0500, Jonathan Coles wrote:
> > 
> > > Using version 2.1-0 built on kernel 2.6.35-28-generic (AMD 
> > > 64-bit), I find container creation is very slow. It took 45 
> > > minutes to create a 10G TrueCrypt 7 partition on an external 
> > > USB drive.
> > > 
> > > Is this normal?
> > > 
> > > The disk drive light shows a second or so of activity every 
> > > 30 seconds. When the operating system formats a partition, 
> > > the disk is continuously active for the few minutes required 
> > > to complete the task.
> > > 
> > > Thanks.
> > 
> > I successfully created a 40 GB Scramdisk container on an external hard drive yesterday (kernel 2.6.32-30, Ubuntu 10.04, ext3 file system inside the container, external hard drive NTFS format). I can verify that the procedure took (in my case) hours.
> > 
> > Also, on an external hard drive (FAT32) so far I've not been able to create any sizeable Truecrypt container. (Caveat: I did successfully create a small one, 15 MB, by mistake). SD4L quits when encrypting about 25 % through or so and tells me "unable to create backup file". Again I'm using ext3 as the file format inside the container.
> > 
> > Thinking that this could be a permissions problem, I'm trying to see if I can create the same container on my computer's internal HD and seeing how that goes. I'll post the results.
> > 
> > Stewart
> 
> It worked on my local hard drive. So it's probably a permissions
> problem. My time for a 15 GB container is similar to yours.
> 
> Stewart

Embarrassingly--I take the first part about being unable to create a
container on an external HD back. I forgot this particular external
drive was FAT32, so it bombed out after 4GB, the file size limit of
FAT32. I reformatted the drive as NTFS and it creates fine (albeit
slow). However, I don't generally create container files or partitions
regularly so I have no idea how "slow" is slow--a large container takes
has always taken a lot of time.

Stewart