MAC OS Lion FileVault encryption speed test comparisons: SSD's vs. HDD

Summary:

Encrypted SSD about 40 percentage points slower than non-encrypted SSD, but still yber fast over traditional HDD.

 

Access the benchmarks directly at XBench Database and do your own comparisons:

 

"SSD17" MacBook (Core 2) — Snow Leopard, non-encrypted SSD

db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=446997

 

"SSD17-Lion-Encryption" MacBook Pro — Lion, encrypted SSD

db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=543713

 

"TK17" MacBook Pro (Core 2) — 2008 Snow Leopard/Leopard non-encrypted HDD

db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=446987

 

Diclaimer: For some reason Xbench has/had troubles running on OS X Lion, and even now I was only able to run parts of the test. Because of this hassle I missed the opportunity to do non-encrypted Snow Leopard vs. non-encrypted Lion SSD test to see the potential effect of the new SSD Trim functionality. I'll leave that to someone else. :)

Done