Very poor r/w-performance

darth

I have a huge file collection in my OneDrive which is managed by Boxcryptor.

Symptom:
- Write and read performance often is very bad (drops to about 250 bytes/s).
- Occurs for at least a year.
- Performance degradation both with encrypted as well as unencrypted files.
- Seems to be fixed temporarily after a reboot.

I thought, this occurs in my individual setup only. Now I have a new laptop where it behaves the same way (in a fresh installation) :-(

Setup:
- 1st laptop: Core i7, 4 phys. cores, 8 GB, SSD, Windows 10 1809 Pro 64-bit
- 2nd laptop: Core i7, 6 phys. cores, 16 GB, SSD, Windows 10 1803 Pro 64 bit
- both: Boxcryptor 2.32.910 (current version)
- no 3rd party Antivirus or any Tuneup utils
- OneDrive contains 120k files in 7,5k folders (total 127 GB).

I guess the number of files may be the issue. But: reducing it is not an option!

I would appreciate your assistance.

oryeth

Same here.

Local Network Drive (1 Gbit / SMB Share) managed by Boxcryptor.

R/W performance after reboot for about 2 Minutes ok.

After short random time r/w access about ~250-300 bytes/s.

Multiple folders with a lot of files from 800k. Somewith ~3GB.

Newest Boxcryptor Version 2.32.210 !

I deal with "darth":

I guess the number of files may be the issue. But: reducing it is not an option!

Local managed folder as testing had no issue !

darth

Darth again,

symptoms (follow-up):
- occurs opening a folder for the first time, subsequent access is fine -> caching!?
- occurs per-level -> same game with subfolders again
- occurs in Boxcryptor's virtual folder (but not in native OneDrive folder)

#fight-doxxing
#help-horst

darth

No ideas, folks?

dt1807

Same or similar problem here.
I have Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit on an older computer (i7-950 @3.07 GHz).
Samsung 850 EVO but computer has only SATA-II

I am compiling directly within of a Subfolder of the Dropbox.

I use Boxcryptor Classic and bought now version 2. But performance is very bad.

Boxcryptor 1.7.409.131:
Compiling source: 10 sec
Creating program: 35 sec

Boxcryptor 2.32.910:
Compiling source: 80 sec
Creating program: 3:20 min

Same computer, same dropbox, parallel sub folders.
Seriously - if this is not a performance issue then I don't know.

When I copy files via Total Commander into the crypted folder then the speed varies between 50 and 150 kBytes/sec. :-(

Edit:
The compiled files (dcu) are in my local temp-folder (not crypted). Only the source-files and the final exe are within of a BC folder.

darth

C'mon Boxcryptor guys, help us.

dt1807

I opened a ticket and sent my log files on January 18th - but no answer yet.
Except an automatic one which includes

"Due to illness-related staff shortages in the support team, there may be delays in the processing of your affairs. We ask for your understanding."

Atm I cannot work with BC2 and have to continue to use BC1.
I know that you don't have that option with Windows 10.

darth

Most annoying aspect - for me - is traversing the folder structure in Windows Explorer. Opening a folder sometimes takes 15-20 seconds.

What helps is mapping a drive to a subfolder (e.g. net use t: \\localhost\x$\OneDrive\Documents /persistent:Yes) which makes access much faster. But since such drives can't be indexed this is just a workaround.

dt1807

I don't have these problems with the folder structure. The handling is pretty smooth.
But I also have less data:
Crypted subfolder in Dropbox contains 9105 files in 445 folders (total 1800 MB).
Most files have a size of 10-50kb. And this could slow it down.

Another test - Copying photos (352 fils, 1.43 GB total) from harddisk to the crypted area of the Dropbox:
Boxcryptor 1: ~ 35 MB/s
Boxcryptor 2: ~ 10 MB/s
The synchronisation of the Dropbox was disabled. My Dropbox is on a SSD.

I created with BC2 a crypted subfolder of a network share (I can write normally with 100 MB/s into that share).
With BC2 the speed goes down to 10 MB/s. And when I try to delete that folder directly afterwards then I have to try it again and again since I don't have access to most of the files for a long time. Even 15 minutes after copying 10% of the data I still cannot delete.

I don't have that problem with local crypted folders.

darth

dt1807, since you use Dropbox - which is capable to detect and update file changes at block-level - you may consider using Veracrypt (former Truecrypt) in file container mode.

dt1807

I used Boxcryptor Personal Unlimited for years. I have never thought that I would get these problems with the newer version which is out for more than 4 years. So BC2 isn't 'Beta' anymore.

I installed BC2 now on another computer (i7-4770, Win 8.1). And I have the same problems. Copying is faster - but the speed is still not acceptable.

As far as I remember I cannot work with Veracrypt at the same time on different computers. Isn't is so? I always have to close the container. So this is not an option for me.
Only option would be to work locally and have real-time synchronisation between local data & dropbox. But with these transferrates I will be soon days behind.

@Robert & das Boxcryptor-Team:
Wieso ist Boxcryptor 2 performancemäßig dermaßen mies. Es kann doch nicht sein, dass es nach 5 Jahren Entwicklung noch 8x langsamer ist als das gute alte Boxcryptor 1.

darth

Just an idea: have you measured copying the same bunch of files via command line? At least regarding my issue -> I guess, Windows Explorer and Boxcryptor aren't friends yet.

dt1807

Robocopy: BC2 -> lokal SSD (16 MB data, 0.5 MB/s !)

Insgesamt KopiertÜbersprungenKeine Übereinstimmung FEHLER Extras
Verzeich.: 3 2 1 0 0 0
Dateien: 369 369 0 0 0 0
Bytes: 16.32 m 16.32 m 0 0 0 0
Zeiten: 0:00:31 0:00:30 0:00:00 0:00:00

Geschwindigkeit: 563750 Bytes/Sek.
Geschwindigkeit: 32.258 Megabytes/Min.

Beendet: Thu Jan 24 15:10:14 2019

Same files from Boxcryptor 1 (8.2 MB/s):

Insgesamt KopiertÜbersprungenKeine Übereinstimmung FEHLER Extras
Verzeich.: 3 2 1 0 0 0
Dateien: 369 369 0 0 0 0
Bytes: 16.32 m 16.32 m 0 0 0 0
Zeiten: 0:00:02 0:00:02 0:00:00 0:00:00

Geschwindigkeit: 8234992 Bytes/Sek.
Geschwindigkeit: 471.210 Megabytes/Min.

Beendet: Thu Jan 24 15:14:27 2019

dt1807

The support told me to "EnableHighPerformanceMode".
But this setting will disable the filename encryption. BC2 was afterwards faster - but it had nothing to do with "HighPerformanceMode" but only with filename encryption.

I did some more tests and found out that Dropbox does not decrease the speed.

I did some compiling & linking a project (rounded the time to 10 sec):

Local ssd: 0:10 min
Local harddisk: 0:10 min
Boxcryptor 1 (filename encryption enabled) : 0:50 min
Boxcryptor 2 (filename encryption enabled) : 3:50 min
Boxcryptor 2 (filename encryption disabled) : 2:50 min

BC 1 compiles fast but for some reason the linking is very slow.
With BC 2 already the compiling is very slow. BC2 seems to have some serious issues with decrypting.

@Darth: Did you try to access your data simultaneously with several processes?

victor.hdianto

"Due to illness-related staff shortages in the support team, there may be delays in the processing of your affairs. We ask for your understanding."

Are they pulling that one again? The same automatic response back in August 2018 when I was having a problem with Boxcryptor.

Looks like they have various long term illness issues with the support team ;)

dt1807

Due to the slow linking of BC1 I changed my output directory (from BC-drive to local drive) and did some new tests:

Boxcryptor 1 (filename encryption enabled) : 0:15 min
Boxcryptor 2 (filename encryption disabled) : 1:25 min

I also wanted to test how Cryptomator performs.
But I had plenty of locked files (couldn't access them anymore within the drive) or couldn't even create folders when I copied my original data into the cryptomator drive.
The copy speed is also very slow. So I conclude (without being able to test) that it cannot be faster than BC2

dt1807

Cryptomator is buggy and cannot handle read-only files atm. For a Windows-User it is also very annoying (and it took me more than an hour to adjust my data) that it is case-sensitive (and this would be for me a no-go).
But here are the test results:

Cryptomator (filename encryption enabled, output in the vault) : 0:50 min
Cryptomator (filename encryption enabled, output on normal disc) : 0:40 min

The speed is similar to BC1 (when data stays in the vault).
I can use BC1 still for some months. But with Windows 10 I have to change it.
Newer computer will be faster. But neither Cryptomator nor Boxcryptor 2 are the tools which could replace BC1 atm. This is very sad.

And the reply of the support does not give me much hope that the performance will be increased:

If the setting doesn't help much, there's probably nothing more we can do here.
I'm sorry I can't give you a better answer here.

darth

Did some testing with fewer files and other cloud provider. Can confirm that Boxcryptor 2 does not scale with huge amount of files. I could bear lower r/w speed (like you ;-). But waiting 10 secs for a folder to expand - on a high-end notebook - is not acceptable! I still have no idea how to work around that issue :-(

Now thinking about decoupling encryption & sync from working with my active notebook

- use the file collection as-is on the local drive
- secure the local drive with Bitlocker or VeraCrypt
- Resilio-Sync the files to another machine, which does the annoying Boxcryptor Encr./OneDrive-Sync in the background

darth

Seems this is not the right place to get help from the boxcryptor team.

ghostcrypter1969

News?