Encrypt whole drives with VeraCrypt - what are the drawbacks?

[tonyrulez]

Currently I have 2 WD Blue 4TB 5400rpm hard drives filled with personal data. I would like to enrcypt the entire drives with VeraCrypt - I already used it a couple of times for containers, but not for drives. The HDD's only store data, no Windows partition or installed programs, but if it works, I might encrypt my Windows SSD and a 7200rpm HDD which also stores programs and games. But first, a couple of questions:

 

1. How does the whole drive encryption work? I guess I'll have to buy a 4TB HDD because the encryption process will wipe the drive, and copy the files over and back to the encrypted one.
2. Will it ask for password on boot, or do I have to manually mount the drives on every Windows login? I have Samba shares and my experience with containers is if I remount it, the shared folders within that container are "unshared" again. Would be a big job if I have to redo all the share settings on mount.
3. Is there a performance loss? For data storage I'm not worried, but if I encrypt the Windows drive and "Programs drive", which also contains games, it might be very important.
4. What about restoring files? I.e. a file gets accidentally deleted and I need the file recovered with a 3rd party tool, like Recuva. Is it still possible, or the encryption causes it not to work?
5. What about drive corruption? I.e. my HDD is beginning to die and have to buy another one to transfer the files. Will the encryption affect drive degradation, speed of breakdown, file access?

Thanks!

[Drama Lama]

5 minutes ago, tonyrulez said:

VeraCrypt

I guess they can only be decrypted with Vera Crypt

[tonyrulez]

14 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

I guess they can only be decrypted with Vera Crypt

No way!

[tonyrulez]

Ok, so I found this issue on Github: Very bad performance on NVME SSD #136

Looks like the performance hit is HUGE compared to BitLocker or an other FOSS alternative, DiskCrypt.

 

Let me copypasta this comparison:

 

As for the reason, it looks like the containers are the problem. DiskCryptor can only encrypt whole disks, while VeraCrypt can create containers, and the latter requires some changes in the driver which hurts the whole drive encryption. It's a known issue for years and there doesn't seem to be any fix for it. The developer said it could be fixed by having two different VC versions, one regular and one that can only make whole drive encryptions.

 

DiskCryptor speeds look great however it's concerning that the latest stable build is from 2016, and the new beta builds are recognized as a threat by Windows Defender...

[eoe99123]

It will ask for password on boot. I have not seen any performance loss from encrypting my drives, maybe an extra 5 seconds for booting. For drive corruption, you have the option to create a rescue disk so you will have no problem getting your files back if you stick a USB in with your rescue disk and boot from that.

[tonyrulez]

What encryption algorithm do you use? Most recommended is AES-Twofish-Serpent however for me it looks overkill, big performance loss while the standard AES-256 should be safe enough.