Re: [SD4L-user] Slow container creation

[Jonathan C. <jco...@ro...>]

Hi Stewart.

I just finished creating a 130GB TrueCrypt volume on an 
external USB drive. It took 9 hours.

I call that slow because simply creating and formatting a 
partition with the operating system takes minutes, not 
hours. Is it the encryption that takes so much time? Even 
though the data is all null, the result of the encryption 
isn't. Observing the drive light, it's clear that the drive 
is only active occasionally - a few seconds in each minute. 
. The rest of the time could be computation.

Creating a new volume isn't something you would do often. 
And I can live with it being slow as long as it works.

On 11-03-26 12:24 PM, Stewart Millen wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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