Backups – TrueCrypt

Your external hard drive is formatted and ready for action.

You can skip this Encryption step if you choose, but I urge you not to.

If you run a business off your computer, then you store your own corporate data on your hard drive and you store data relevant to your client on your hard drive.

When you backup that data to your external drive (See RoboCopy ), those corporate data are copied to your external drive.

When (not if) your external drive is lost, mislaid or stolen, your client's data is gone. Out there.

And you are faced with the prospect of approaching every single one of your clients, past and present, and informing them that their corporate data is compromised.

Think about that.

Or decide right now to encrypt your external drive.

If you keep client data on a laptop, you ought for the same reason encrypt your laptop drive.

Back to Work

Download a copy of TrueCrypt ; it is free - but don't let that stop you making a donation - and is a small download. There are no excuses.

"TrueCrypt Setup 6.3a.exe (3.2 MB)" is the current version, but by the time you read this a later version might be available.

Once the download is complete, execute the TrueCrypt Setup executable file, and accept all the installation defaults.

As part of the installation process, a shortcut icon will be added to your Start menu; you can move or copy this to another place later on, but if you are one of those folks who worry about being able to find something once it has been installed - look on your Start menu.

Execute TrueCrypt and choose the Create Volume command button

Your formatted external drive is a non-system partition drive, so choose that option.

You will want to create a standard TrueCrypt volume; the entire external drive will be encrypted.

Select as the device your formatted external hard drive.

NOTE: In my examples I am using a little 4 gigabyte memory key as a drive; if you thought I was going to re-format and re-encrypt my current backup drives you were very much mistaken!

We want to encrypt the entire external drive device, so answer YES.

TrueCrypt will obtain the device name and place it in the text box.

NOTE: If you are using my SAFE suite you will want to type/copy this device identifier into the main file as a parameter.

Ours is a brand-new formatted external drive, so we will want to create the volume as is. We have no data on the drive, so we have no need of encryption-in-place, although you may want to encrypt your laptop drive(s) retroactively.

Frankly I have no idea what these encryption algorithms are or mean; I trust TrueCrypt's default.

If you know more than I about encryption, feel free to experiment.

If you had any lingering doubts about whether you were about to trash your laptop hard drive, this screen should set your mind at rest.

Remember that in this example I am using my 4 GB memory key, so 3.81 GB seems about right.

If you had purchased and formatted a 500 GB drive and this screen shows only 100GB, choose Cancel or Back. Your laptop drive is probably 100 GB, …..

You know about passwords. You will probably be typing this in by hand once each evening, so make it memorable but strong.

Tip 1: Choose some event from your childhood, before the age of ten, before you emigrated from England; something no-one else around you could probably know or guess.

Tip 2: Type it into a NotePad text file or a Word document, save (but do not close) that document, then copy and paste it twice into TrueCrypt's password boxes. That way the password you entered is surely the one you have saved in your PassWords.doc, although of course you don't call it that, do you?

Like the man says, move your mouse as randomly as possible. Don't do it for more than a minute though!

Then choose the Format Command button.

The answer to the question is Yes.

It is true that we are apprehensive about such a step, and that is good, but we established just a few seconds ago that we are on the correct drive, and the Caution box displays that '\Device\Hardisk1\Partition1' (I:) text which is further confirmation.

And away we go! Make a note of the time remaining. Your 500 Gigabyte external drive will take significantly longer than 20 minutes to encrypt, so go to bed. The job will be completed by the time you wake up.

Here is another screen snapshot towards the end of my run.

Encryption took place at about 4.5 Megabytes per second. Admittedly this was a memory key, but still, an approximation for a 500 Gigabyte drive would be 500/4.5 times this, or about an hour. Since hard drives are slower than memory, anticipate about 5 hours to encrypt your external drive.

And here we are.

Done!

Note that if you try to access the encrypted drive through Windows explorer, Windows will think the drive is unformatted.

Technically this is so, but we formatted it and then encrypted it, so the scrambled state of the drive fools Windows into thinking that the drive is unformatted.

Don't do what I did and spend a merry weekend re-formatting, re-encrypting until the truth dawns on you.

The proof of the pudding is when you right-click on the drive letter; Windows Explorer will tell you that the drive is fully used up and that there is no free space and no used space.

TrueCrypt has gobbled up the entire drive, as we intended.

Come to think of it, since this is a pie chart, that should read "The proof of the pie is …".

The external drive has been formatted, and it has been encrypted.

Let us take a look at the encrypted drive

Remember that to Windows the drive appears to be un-formatted.

We will load TrueCrypt and use True Crypt to access the drive.

Note that from Windows's point of view, our external drive I: does not exist, because it is not formatted (from Windows's point of view) and therefore it is pointless to let you see it.

When we load TrueCrypt and choose the Select Device command button, our external drive I: is visible.

Now we need to select an unused drive letter which will be equated to the un-encrypted form of the encrypted drive (DO pay attention!).

With the external drive selected, a drive letter chosen, use the Mount command button and key in your password.

Once done, the encrypted drive is available NOT as the physical drive letter - I: - but as the drive X: - the drive letter we selected.

Now we have a drive called X: which is 100% free - for the time being.

Now comes the third and final long job - the initial backup.

Tomorrow night: Another overnight run- RoboCopy -ing the external drive.

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