Increase True Crypt AES performance

I used the new version of True Crypt to encrypt my new external hard drive which has become almost a standard procedure for me to do. Whenever I buy a new hard drive I encrypt it completely with True Crypt. I discovered by chance a way to increase the performance of the AES algorithm in True Crypt.

The solution is a little bit complicated because you have to compile a source to get it to work. The benefit however is a much better performance of that algorithm which has been programmed in Assembler in comparison to the one programmed in C that True Crypt is using by default.

The increase is amazing. The bandwidth increases by about 20 MB/s from 66 MB/s to 85 MB/s on the system of the user who discovered it. It depends on the hard drive of course but everyone should see a gain in the end.

You will need the following to compile the algorithm source and True Crypt:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with SP1
• Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52
• Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK) Vista Build 6000
• YASM

You can read the full instructions in this thread. I was not able to locate a precompiled version of True Crypt with this faster AES algorithm yet. If anyone comes up with a trustworthy download source let me know. I unfortunately do not have Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.