Question about PIM and Boot Times
Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid
Brought to you by:
idrassi
Menu
▾
▴
Long story short, when I set the PIM to the default value, my PC takes a good 90+ seconds to verify the password, while with a PIM of 1 it instantly verifies.
Is this normal/intended behavoiur? I just want to make sure I haven't accidendtly don't something wrong.
This is normal for your PC. You can reduce the mount times by selecting the hash value (PKCS-5 PRF) on the login screen that your volume uses verses Autodetection which causes VeraCrypt to try all the various hash algorithms and it waits for the results from all the hashes.
If you want, you can set your default hash in Settings > Default Mount Parameters.
You can read about the number of iterations performed on the hash at the link below.
https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Personal%20Iterations%20Multiplier%20(PIM)
Last edit: Mounir IDRASSI 2016-08-22
Since the title of the question refers to boot time, I would add that the slowness of the boot with default is PIM is due to MBR bootloader being 16-bit and the iterations associated with default PIM very high.
EFI bootloader is less affected because it is built as 64-bit.
Indeed, using a small PIM is the solution if slow boot is an issue. You can choose the best tradeoff between speed and security but using the Benchmark tool (menu Tools -> Benchmark) : choose PKCS5-PRF, check Pre-Boot and select the PIM value you want to measure (leave empty for default which is 98 for Pre-Boot).