True Crypt 6 released

True Crypt is my encryption software of choice and I was very pleased with version 5 which added the option to encrypt the complete operating system and increased the performance of the application noticeably. Less than half a year after publishing True Crypt 5 the developers have already finished their work on version 6 and are offering it as a download on their homepage.

Version 6 of True Crypt introduces several interesting features and improvements. Users with multi-core CPUs will see a huge speed increase due to the multi-core support that has been implemented in True Crypt 6. Each additional cpu core will increase encryption and decryption performance by 100% which means that a quad core cpu will be 400% faster than a single core cpu of the same speed. Mounting will also benefit from multi-core CPUs.

Another interesting addition is the option to use a fully encrypted and hidden operating system that can be installed in a hidden True Crypt partition. That’s basically the hidden container on a encrypted partition feature ported to operating systems, very useful in my opinion.

Backup Headers were introduced in this version of True Crypt as well. Previously one header was used to determine the size of the encrypted partition. If something happened to that space on the hard drive the partition or container could no longer be mounted and that all data would be lost. The backup header is a second header for this case which reduces the likeliness of this.

Mac OS X and Linux users can now create hidden volumes as well. The most important additions to this version are in my opinion multi-core support and the option to install a hidden operating system.