Difference between encrypting with disk utility and right-click encrypt?

[micrors4racer]

I am trying to encrypt some external drives and want to know the difference between using disk utility and selecting the file system as encrypted or formatting it as normal then right clicking the drive in finder and selecting encrypt.

The only thing I noticed was that using disk utility takes seconds while using the right click method takes hours and even days? My drive light will keep blinking like its writing something and using the terminal command "diskutil cs list" will show that it is converting the drive to encrypted status in the background but it is very slow even if the drive is empty.

So whats the difference and which is the better method?

 

[ZMacintosh]

its my understanding that the Disk Utility function you must erase the drive and it then encrypts the drive and forthcoming data. Where as encrypting via Finder takes longer because it encrypts the drive and all data currently on the disk.