Encrypting an USB Drive with True Crypt

Martin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:21:18 +0000

My last True Crypt guide dates way back and the purchase of my new shiny 500 Megabyte Maxtor USB drive made me think about writing a new guide that takes the changes of the software into account. My old Teac USB drive started to behave weirdly every now and then which I saw as a first sign of reaching the end of its life cycle and since I did not want to take any chances I decided to buy a new drive, encrypt it with True Crypt and transfer all the files from the old device to it.

I don’t want to point out all of the valid reasons for encrypting a drive or partition with True Crypt other than pointing out some key elements such as privacy and theft protection.

You obviously need True Crypt for this guide, the latest available version for Windows is 5.0a. Download and install the software as usual and start it afterwards. The main True Crypt window will load and look like the following:

You obviously need to make some decisions before you continue. True Crypt can encrypt a partition or create an encrypted container on a hard drive. The choice is yours, I prefer to encrypt the whole partition. The benefits of using a container are that some data of that drive is accessible without True Crypt. This guide will encrypt the full USB drive.

Click on the Create Volume button in the lower left corner. A window will appear asking about the type of volume that you want to create. The choices are to create an encrypted container, encrypt a partition / drive or encrypt the system partition (the one running Windows).

We are going to create a volume within a non-system device and check the second option in that screen. The next window gives us the choice to create a standard or hidden True Crypt volume. Hidden volumes are created in standard volumes. The reason is to give up only the standard password and not the password for the hidden volume when someone forces you. We are creating a standard volume therefor.

Now we are selecting the device that we want to encrypt, in my case the new USB drive. Next in the line are the encryption options. Which encryption and hash algorithm are you going to use. My selection was AES and SHA-512. You can run benchmarks in that window and get additional information about each algorithm. All algorithms are secure (unless someone proves otherwise, which has not happened yet)

The Volume Password is probably the most important part.You access your files with it and if you happen to forget it your files are lost.Make sure you use a large string, something that is not a dictionary word and not a combination of them. You should also forget about using personal information like birthdays, names or places.

A password should be at least made of 20 characters and be made of upper and lower case chars, numbers and special chars. The maximum amount of chars is 64.

A keyfile can be created as well which then works in combination with the password. You get access to the encrypted hard drive only if you supply the keyfile and the password. The keyfile is simply a file on your computer which you select or generate during setup.

The drive will be formated in the end. You need to move your mouse randomly around the screen for some time to improve the quality of the encryption keys. The file system should and cluster size can remain as is unless you need them to be different. I’m using Quick Format since there have not been any files on the USB drive previously. The process is finished after this step. You need to mount the drive now to be able to use it.

Select a drive letter currently not assigned and click on Select Device afterwards in the main menu. Now select the partition or drive that you have encrypted and click on ok.

Now click on Mount which opens up a password box where you have to enter the password that you have selected during setup. Click ok afterwards and work with the hard drive normally from there on if the password was correct. I was not able to experience any major slowdowns due to the encryption, everything runs smooth and solid and even large file transfers and many connections work as usual.

Tags: encryption, Security, software, true-crypt, true-crypt-how-to, Windows

Create a secure data safe with True Crypt

Martin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:59:34 +0000

This article is going to show everyone, even the inexperienced, how to create a data safe that can store as much personal information and files as you want using the open source program True Crypt. True Crypt makes it very easy to encrypt almost every piece of hardware including partitions, hard drives, usb keys and other storage devices. Once everything is setup you would mount the True Crypt container using the password that you have selected while creating the encrypted container. This is actually the only password that you have to remember, everything else can be kept in the encrypted container for safety reasons. A big advantage is the fact that you can start any applications from that container once it is mounted, this includes torrent clients, ftp clients, usenet clients and everything else that you can think off.

True Crypt is available for Linux and several Windows editions including Vista and XP. Please download the software from the location above and install it afterwards. The only other thing that you need is some free space on a hard drive or a storage device. I would suggest an usb key for instance, size does not really matter that much. If you ask me I encrypted a complete external hard drive with 320 Gigabytes of space that stores my private files that no one else should be able to access.

Launch True Crypt
Click on Create Volume
Create a Standard Volume, click Next
Decide if you want to encrypt a device or create a encrypted container. Select File creates an container of x megabytes that you specify, select device encrypts the device. I’m using the second option for my hard drive but this is really up to you and does not change the data safe that we create
If you select File: Browse to a location that you want to store the file and name it, something like test, data or whatever. Click save, then next.
Select an encryption algorithm, AES is fine for instance. Click Next
Select a file size for the container. It should be at least some megabytes, the limit is the space on the device that the file is created on
Create a secure password that you can remember. Write it down for the first time if you want to be sure that you do not forget it. Get rid of that paper as soon as possible.
Click on Next, move the mouse around for a minimum of 30 seconds and click on format afterwards.
A message should appear that the container was created.
To mount it simply select a drive letter that is not taken and click on Select File and browse to the file that you created
click on mount and enter the password that you have selected during installation
If everything worked out fine the container should be mounted and you can use it like any other drive letter.You could for instance move important files into the container or create a textfile that contains all of your passwords.
do not forget to unmount the partition if you leave the computer for a longer time. Booting or shutting down automatically unmounts the drive.
It would be nearly the same process if you want to encrypt a whole partition or drive.
Instead of selecting a file at the beginning you select the drive letter of that partition and follow the same menus as before.
Mounting it is similar as well, you only click on Select Devices instead of Select File before you click on mount

So, where are the advantages of this method over tools that work like password safes ? The main advantage is that you can not only store passwords in the encrypted container but also files and everything else that you can think off. Just move the files inside and no one can access them unless they can provide the password to this True Crypt container.

As I said earlier True Crypt works with big hard drives and there is no visible loss in speed during read and write operations. The devices work as usual once mounted. You could for instance run your favorite torrent client from that drive saving those torrents on it as well.

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