I have an encrypted VeraCrypt file mounted as a drive. I have noticed that thumbnail loading is a bit faster on this "drive" than other folders from the same physical drive (i.e normal, non-encrypted folder). How could this be?
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Re the thumbnail speed, if you close any open listers, then disable thumbnail caching entirely (Preferences / Display Modes / Thumbnails), then go to the folders, do they then work at a similar speed? If so, is it the faster or the slower speed compared to the two folders originally?
My guessing is that because vera crypt file container is placed in single area on your hard drive (not fragmented) and then hard drive needs less head movement than in case of rest of folders, where files can be put anywhere on hdd. Also veracrypt file container is only part of whole hdd and have it's own MFT, which is faster if not contains as many files as whole hdd and is probably not fragmented.
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why would the veracrypt container not be fragmented? i mean from the OS standpoint it's still just "a regular file" on the HDD, right? Having its own MFT I could see how that factors in.
I disabled caching and it seems like the encrypted folder is still a little faster.
I'm gonna experiment with having disabled caching for a while tho so I can have actual longitudinal data in my "research". I will also be employing whole drive encryption in the future which will be interesting to observe how thumbnail loading is in that case.
Yes, veracrypt is regular file but as most regular files NTFS tries to NOT fragment them. Really - most of files on your HDD are not fragmented (check it with any defrag software). BUT separate files can be written in different places of your hard drive. That means one image is at the beginning of HDD, second - at the end, while veracrypt file container is in one place. You may even check is file fragmented or not using Fraggler. Or even Contig: https://docs.microsoft.com/pl-pl/sysinternals/downloads/contig. So first check is your veracrypt container fragmented, then say that i'm not right.
About MFT that was probably just not important, but for sure is smaller that MFT of whole drive, isn't?
Anyway - my guessing is still on hdd head moves.
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I never said you were wrong.
Your theory seems plausible.
Have you tried any other speed tests? e.g. Thumbnails in Explorer, and benchmarking tools?
The OS tries to cache files that are in use so, if there is enough memory, it may be caching large parts of the encrypted volume (since it is a file).
(If that volume is in active use, that may in turn be pushing other files out of the cache, making them slower to re-access.)
Whatever is going on is probably unrelated to Opus, if it's still happening with thumbnail caching disabled. (The main thing that was testing was if thumbnail caching was being used for one type of drive and not the other, which can affect speed of course.)
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I don't think it is an Opus issue as such, just wanted some input as to why this could be. In 343 years when I've deployed my whole drive encryption, I can report back with my new findings 