Automatic Encryption/Decryption for Your USB Flash Drive (Page 3 of 3)

So what do we get? To find out, we clicked “Exit” in the TrueCrypt window and right-clicked the TrueCrypt icon in the system tray and selected “Exit” again. Then we right-clicked “Safely Remove Hardware,” also in the system tray, selected the USB Flash Drive, and clicked “Stop.”

Upon re-inserting the flash drive, the AutoPlay message looked like this.

We clicked “Mount TrueCrypt volume” and got the password dialog that we’ve seen before.

After entering the password, we got an open folder in Windows Explorer showing “Removable Disk (K:),” which is our mounted MyData.tc encrypted container. Clicking the drive in the left-hand panel and selecting Properties showed that the volume had 7.35 GB free space.

Copying a 703 MB AVI movie to the flash drive took 22 seconds for Vista to show the operation complete and then another 19 seconds for the LED on the drive to stop flashing.

We then right-clicked TrueCrypt in the system tray and selected “Dismount all mounted devices.” Vista then continued to read the flash drive for several seconds. Opening drive J: under “Computer” (“My Computer” in Windows XP) then showed the original contents of the drive.

So far, so good. Let’s try mounting the encrypted volume in TrueCrypt from the PC. We restarted TrueCrypt and clicked “Select File.” We navigated to Drive J:, selected “MyData.tc,” and clicked “Open.” In TrueCrypt we clicked the K: drive letter in the upper part of the dialog. Then we clicked “Mount” and got the password dialog.

And that opened on “Local Disk (K:),” and there’s our movie.

Encrypting the entire USB flash drive and starting TrueCrypt from the drive upon insertion worked great. File operations were transparent, with no obvious indication that on-the-fly encryption and decryption were taking place. I even successfully played the movie that I copied to the flash drive in Gom Player on my desktop and the quality was excellent.

The experience will be less wonderful if the user does not have administrative privileges on the PC.

Overall, I think that encrypting the entire flash drive with TrueCrypt’s Traveler files installed to auto-start is preferable to creating a hidden, encrypted folder on the card.

There are situations, I suspect, when small units of important data, intrigue, and mortal danger make it more important to try to “hide in the crowd” using the hidden volume method.

We’ll look at an encryption method that does not require administrative privileges in the next article. Right now, I think I’ll watch the rest of the movie.

Thanks for reading this.

Link to this article:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/9565.aspx

Further Reading

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Broken Down On the Information Superhighway - In the war against terrorism and media piracy the lines have been drawn - or have they? Highly visible is the conflict between the pipe owners and the content pushers, but are secret deals and treaties that affect the global use of the Internet, music, and movies being made out of the public eye? Read this to learn about the secretive "Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement" and who's really behind ACTA.

"We're Not Blocking P2P Traffic" - How Comcast Did It - Every network provider has the right to manage traffic on his own network. However, did Comcast go too far when they decided to interfere with traffic that belonged only to a few specific file-sharing protocols? Here we'll look at the nuts and bolts of how Comcast actually did it.

How to Surf Anonymously: Get Lost in the Crowd with TOR - When you're surfing the web, every data packet your PC sends out can tell the wrong people what you're doing and with whom you're communicating online. One method of anonymity is getting "lost in the crowd." Here we'll show you how.