Encryption help

Hi everyone,

I was thinking of encrypting my external 320GB HD but was not sure how it exactly works. I have some things on the HD already, what i want to do is encrypt everything that goes on my external HD. I have heard truecrypt is a good peace of software but im a bit of a noob when it comes to trying to use it and would be really grateful for some helpfull advice.

If i manage to get this done would it be worth while encrypting my entire desktop HD? its 500gb in size and in 4 partitions. If i was to encrypt this would it slow down performance at all as it has to decrypt files as and when i want them?

Hope you can help

many thanks

In my experience Truecrypt is pretty easy to use. Here are a couple of tuts to get you started.

Getting Started with TrueCrypt (to Secure Your Data) - How-To Geek

Protect private data with Truecrypt - Tutorial 1 - Installation

Fot the intenal hdd, you can also considering setting up different types of users, then restrict access to specific drives.

Many thanks for the responce guys. I have red and watched the tuts linked, one thing im not to sure on tho. If i want to encrypt my entire external hd which is 320gb how big do i need to make the file container? will this also encrypt the items i already have on the hd?

thanks so much again

Hi there
Please remember that once encrypted not even the Holy Ghost (or any other agency earthly or spiritually) will be able to get access to your data if you lose your password.

These days I'm really not sure WHY you would need to encrypt data -- put all your private stuff on external drives so nobody has physical access to them -- that's a far better precaution than any amount of encryption -- no physical access -- no access period.

You can get nice small POCKET sized 1TB usb drives these days for a very small amount of money.

Cheers
jimbo

Just tried it on an old 2gb flash drive loads of stuff on it but nothing i need now anyway i selected the option to encrypt "a non partiton system drive" i see by default it selects the whole usb drive to format but i dont want to format the whole drive as i would lose everything on "my external hd the one i want to encrypt later". So im guessing if i want to do this i would have to take everything off the hd encrypt the whole 320gb then transfer everything back over?