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We are planning to use the open source tool TrueCrypt for USB flash drive encryption. Anyone want to share their opinion/feedback about adavantages/disadvantages for it and want to share with us, please let me know.

Thank you in advance for any replies.

Hemal

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Essentially a great product. Secure, fast and reliable. The only drawback I can think of is that key management is a a bit of a hassle compared to the commercial products. Eg. if you want to be able to recover data for a user that has lost her password.

Roy
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For those of us managing enterprise environments, TrueCrypt requires administrator rights when you insert the thumb drive into the computer. Not ideal.

GregD
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  • Is that true even if Truecrypt is already installed on that system? – Roy Dec 01 '09 at 20:18
  • I don't believe so. This doesn't work for me because I was looking for a solution that would run right from the USB drive for my end users who don't have admin rights on their workstations. – GregD Dec 01 '09 at 21:12
  • Documentation confirms that once installed, a non-admin can use. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=non-admin-users – Will M Feb 03 '10 at 18:41
  • @Will M - While it's true that you can run it without admin rights, you can only do that if TC is installed on the workstation by an admin. We were looking for a completely portable solution via thumb drives and TC will NOT run in portable mode without admin rights. – GregD Feb 03 '10 at 20:51
  • Agree that is an unfortunate limitation on TrueCrypt. Please post back if you find an alternative without that issue! – Will M Feb 04 '10 at 17:38
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Wonderful product. I have used it for USB drives and full HD encryption and have yet to run into any frustrations.

I even recommended it earlier today on superuser.

Community
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Ben S
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I've never used TrueCrypt to secure an entire drive or device but I do offer one caution. I had a TrueCrypt file become corrupted and unrecoverable just one time when using the Mac version to open a 40GB file created by the Windows version. This may not have been a TrueCrypt issue though, as I had done the same a number of times previously. Still, it prevents me from repeating the exercise.

John Gardeniers
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