I have always done this as a large, single partition on the external hard drive - and as a corollary I always do container files on USB flash drives. By doing it as the partition instead of the entire drive - it prevents Windows (and possibly other operating systems) from trying to be helpful and prompt every single time that the device isn't formatted yet... Of course, that means the entire drive is only useful on a computer that has TrueCrypt installed, or where it can be run in Traveler Mode.
I think the real question is - how much encrypted storage do you need? Or perhaps, what the potential ramifications of storing unencrypted data on that drive? I would think those needs would dictate whether to use an entire partition/drive or a file container on the drive.
I'm interested in the tool to undelete files-May you elaborate on this? :) – JFW – 2010-10-04T15:07:13.967
1+1. I prefer option 2. I once bricked an (old) external HDD when I created a truecrypt partition on the whole disk. – Nifle – 2010-10-04T15:07:43.233
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@JFW: search for
– fseto – 2010-10-04T15:14:26.740undelete file
... personally use testdisk http://superuser.com/questions/6810/best-undelete-tool-for-ntfs-fatoption 2 plus 1 – RobotHumans – 2010-10-04T16:12:24.750