j debert wrote:
On 08/07/2012 12:32 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Is there a way to encrypt or password protect such a harddrive/ filesystem such that it is accessible from Windows and Linux both? (with very few or no changes on the Windows source system). If the same systems would work the Macs too it would be great :-)
Some kind of prep would be necessary if the Windows box is not already set up for encryption.
I haven't tried using the disk's encryption system with Linux. I don't feel it's ready for primetime yet and there is the question of trust wrt backdooring or a vendor's key allowing unauthorized access. Vendor implementations seem to block it's use with Linux as well.
It may be possible to use Truecrypt or Realcrypt without installing it on the windows box.
Alternatively, booting from a Linux live CD or USB stick would avoid having to change the Windows system. I would usually recommend Knoppix since it seems to work on more systems than Ubuntu and derivatives but IIRC truecrypt/realcrypt is not in the latest releases.
It's going to take a few hours to set up a large disk for use with Truecrypt. 500Gb USB HD takes about 3.5 hours typically on a 4GHz/4Gb box running X and Linux and doing nothing else. That's the main drawback of using Truecrypt over hardware disk encryption.
Thanks jd and everyone else who've chipped in - Truecrypt/Realcrypt seem to be getting the majority of votes, but for now, I'll quite likely go with ZIP-files with password. There's built-in support for those as of Win XP, and I expect they won't be an issue an Macs either. It may not be the strongest/most secure solution, but it's sufficient to ward off anyone who accidentally gets hold of the data. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (15.1°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org