Version 6.1 of True Crypt was released two days ago and it has – again – added interesting features to the encryption software. The major improvement of this release affects Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. It is now possible to encrypt non system partitions on those operating systems without losing the data on those partitions. That feature is unfortunately not available in previous operating systems such as Windows XP.

To encrypt a non-system partition and retain the data of the partition one would have to follow the path
Create Volume’ > ‘Encrypt a non-system partition’ > ‘Standard volume’ > ‘Select Device’ > ‘Encrypt partition in place’ in True Crypt.

Another interesting addition is the support of keyfiles on security tokens and smart cards that comply with the PKCS #11 standard. Text output of the True Crypt bootloader can now be suppressed or customized.

A complete list of changes and updates is available in the True Crypt release notes on the True Crypt homepage.

Most of the tips can be classified as core tips, everyone should use them to make his system more secure. I know its a lot to read and pc magazine has the nasty habit to divide the article on lots of pages, probably to increase page impressions. If you are interested head over to pc magazine and read the article.

Update: The PC Magazine site has divided the tips into dozens of pages which make it annoying to read. Here is a tip to make it somewhat more comfortable to read.

See the print icon and text at the top of the article? when you click on it you will see that chapter’s text on one page. While that still does not list all security tips on a single page, it nevertheless reduces the pages that you need to access to eight, which is a lot less than before.

Keep in mind that the guide has been posted in 2005, and that a lot has changed security wise since then. The network and wireless section for instance suggests to enable the WPA protocol and not WPE. While that was a feasible thing to do in 2005, it could be disastrous today. The article mentions WPA2 but does not recommend it as it is “benign overkill for home users”.

You can still learn something about security from the article, but I would recommend to double-check what is being said before you implement it on your computer.