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I'm getting a new external HDD and am considering using TrueCrypt to secure it, as I work on many commercial projects and like to have the peace of mind when I travel.
It's a 2TB HDD and I have two options.
- Create a TrueCrypt volume that nearly fills the drive.
- Encrypt the entire drive partition.
What are the pros/cons of each? Keep in mind that this is more than a backup drive, it will be used as an extension of existing HD space on my laptop.
Is one method more resilient to corruption than the other? Especially partition encryption, is it likely that the partition could be altered by a computer that didn't have TrueCrypt and didn't "understand" it (if it was inadvertently connected to a different computer)?
How resilient is it to a system crash while writing? NTFS, being a journaling system has fairly good integrity by itself, but how does TrueCrypt's encryption factor in?
Data safety is more important than raw security, but encryption is a must.
NTFS self healing can delete a corrupt file and you will not know it happened util you look for that file, chances are rare, but few know about this enhancement in Windows 7 and NTFS...http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2010/07/ntfs-self-healing-is-an-overlooked-but-useful-feature-in-windows-7/
– Moab – 2011-10-06T16:35:03.420To me, the partition approach appears to be more secure, less risk that the TC file get deleted by accident or a virus, also you can have multiple partitions and have some unencrypted for non sensitive files. – jhcaiced – 2011-10-06T18:25:25.417
AFAIK, neither Windows or Linux will "format" an unknown partition without your intervention, so it seems unlikely that the partition table gets corrupted. – jhcaiced – 2011-10-06T23:37:58.787