Windows 7: Encryption Of Main Hardrive is it worth it?

Hey guys I have recently learned that you can encrypt the OS drive using Truecrypt. Now what I was wondering is what happens if it encrypted and I get a virus? Will it scramble the password hashes or will it have no effect? Any help here would be appreciated.

NOTE: This is for my knowledge it hasn't actually happened.

The virus shouldn't scramble the encryption although the virus will probably do what most viruses would which would be slowing down your pc and corrupt the OS like most viruses usually do on any machine. So it should have no effect,all the encryption should do is have you provided a password at boot that you made for the drive and say your hdd was stolen, another computer shouldn't be able to get into your hdd and see it as a blank partition. You could get into it with say using truecypt but you would still need the password or got a hold of your true crypt recovery disk. If one were not able to remember the password or if someone stole the hdd they shouldn't be able to get in unless they acquired the password. They would have to wipe the harddrive completely to make it useable. Encryption is great especially for a laptop because if it were to be stolen, nobody should be able to get your info from your drive unless they knew the password or it was a extremely password to figure out,I would suggest 26characters for a good encryption or more with capitals and numbers and symbols to make it harder for someone to get in but make sure you can remember it lol.So no it shouldn't have a effect on the encryption of the password on the drive. As being worth it, that depends all upon on what your going to use it for. If it is for a laptop that you say take to school and such were others are possibly mischief and could get a hold of it then yes. If it's a desktop and just for extra security to keep others from your home or where ever your living away from getting into your OS then yeah it's worth it. Use to have my HDD encrypted but decrypted it . You could always decrypt it if you ever decided you don't want a encryption anymore.

Thanks. The virus thing was what I was worried about. Even though I do have good anti virus.

Luke,
Don't encrypt your main partition unless absolutely necessary.

Trouble lies ahead if you do.

Simply password protect the accounts on your computer will suffice.

Okay thanks

Very clever.

Yea, nd you what set that Win account password to like 6 characters NOONE WILL GUESS THAT!

..
..
.
...
..
...
...

Wait....but i ave heard some flashy group called AnonOps use it for their evil work?! Those terrorists. You see using TC you become a Terrorist, and then even doing a system encryption you will become the new Osama...honest question do you want to be the new Osama? Do you?

The Answer, don t use TC and don t do system encryption - that s crap anyways. If you want to be secure just set an account password. Maybe you set one with 8 characters - like "hellyeah" - oh man that would be the strongest password in the world. And you know what? The whole world would know you re an true American.