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Ask Slashdot: Simplifying Encryption and Backup?
New submitter FuzzNugget writes "A recent catastrophic hard drive failure has caused me to ponder whether the trade-off between security and convenience with software-based OTFE is worthwhile. My setup involves an encrypted Windows installation with TrueCrypt's pre-boot authentication, in addition to having data stored in a number of TrueCrypt file containers. While it is nice to have some amount of confidence that my data is safe from prying eyes in the case of loss or theft of my laptop, this setup poses a number of significant inconveniences." Read on below; FuzzNugget lists some problems with this set-up, and seeks advice on a simpler system for backing up while keeping things locked down.
FuzzNugget continues: "1. Backup images of the encrypted operating system can only be restored to the original hard drive (ie.: the drive that has failed). So, recovery from this failure requires the time-consuming process of re-installing the OS, re-installing my software and re-encrypting it. Upgrading the hard drive where both the old and new drives are still functional is not much better as it requires decryption, copying the partition(s) and re-encryption.
2. With the data being stored in large file containers, each around 100-200GB. It can be come quite burdensome to deal with these huge files all the time. It's also a particularly volatile situation, as the file container is functionally useless if it's not completely intact.
3. As much as I'd like to use this situation as an opportunity to upgrade to an SSD, use with OTFE is said to pose risks of data leaks, cause decreased performance and premature failure due to excessive write operations.
So, with that, I'm open to suggestions for alternatives. Do you use encryption for your hard drive(s)? What's your setup like and how manageable is it?"
2. With the data being stored in large file containers, each around 100-200GB. It can be come quite burdensome to deal with these huge files all the time. It's also a particularly volatile situation, as the file container is functionally useless if it's not completely intact.
3. As much as I'd like to use this situation as an opportunity to upgrade to an SSD, use with OTFE is said to pose risks of data leaks, cause decreased performance and premature failure due to excessive write operations.
So, with that, I'm open to suggestions for alternatives. Do you use encryption for your hard drive(s)? What's your setup like and how manageable is it?"
On Windows, I prefer to use Acronis software for imaging and TrueCrypt for encryption.
Since the TrueCrypt operations happen at a low level that's transparent to Windows and other applications that interact with the disk, once I enter the pre-boot password for TrueCrypt and load Windows I can interact with the disk as if it were not encrypted: by making images with Acronis after Windows has booted, Acronis sees the disk as a standard NTFS drive. I can save the image of the unencrypted contents of the disk to some sort of secure backup media.
The backup media may be encrypted on its own, or I could use the encryption mechanisms built into Acronis to protect the image files. If I were use Acronis bootable media and try imaging the disk, I'd only get an image of the encrypted data -- by booting into Windows first I can make an image of the unencrypted contents of the disk.
If the encrypted drive were to ever fail I could write the image back to a new drive sans encryption. This also allows me more flexibility in regards to resizing the filesystem to new disks: since I took the image of the unencrypted contents of the disk I can resize the filesystem to a new disk. If I had encrypted the raw disk itself then I would not have this option. After restoring, I can then encrypt-in-place using TrueCrypt to secure the new drive.
As for the encrypted containers, mount them and back up their contents.
Get a Mac. Turn full disk encryption via Filevault2 on. Backup using Time Machine with an encrypted backup drive. The encryption is invisible except that you have to enter the password from time to time.