Home Login
Add a new review for Truecrypt Data Encryption version 5.1a
Reviews For Truecrypt Data Encryption version 5.1a
Average Rating: 5 Based On 1 Reviews
Date: May 29, 2008, 5:07:32pm
user: jobhunter
computer: Pentium 4 3Ghz HT
operating system: XP Pro SP2
screen reader: Jaws 6.2
rating: 5
comments: It was about two years ago when I wrote the review for TrueCrypt 4.2 for this site. Since then I have used TrueCrypt to implement encrypted data storage for many situations.
It wasn’t until recently that I was listening to the Security Now podcast with Steve Gibson, reviewing TrueCrypt 5,. This latest version contains a feature for full drive or partition encryption. This is just what I had been waiting for. A free, reliable full drive encryption tool that is also free. (Yes, I’m cheap and proud of it.) I have wanted to encrypt the hard drive on the family laptop, thus rendering all of the data on the drive useless if the computer is ever stolen.
First, let me say that encrypting your entire hard drive is somewhat scary, especially for a blind person. That is because I know that the information that will be displayed at boot time will not be able to be processed by a screen reader, so you’ll be flying blind, so to speak. (But there is good news on that front, so read on.)
After listening to Steve’s podcast several times (I strongly recommend that you listen to it at least once. You can find it at: http://www.grc.com/securitynow/ and go to episode number 133.) and reading the TrueCrypt manual on the subject, I decided to take the plunge.
I made an image back up of the entire laptop drive onto a spare external drive, just in case the worst happened. This is the computer that both my wife and daughter use, so I knew that I would be eating canned beans for a long time if I messed it up. I also made an additional backup of the Documents and Settings folder onto my desktop computer as an extra measure of future culinary insurance. I then installed the TrueCrypt program, which is very quick and easy. I tested the user interface of the new version by setting up an encrypted volume and mounting it. The user interface is still perfectly accessible using Jaws. No scripts are needed. It’s a beautiful thing.
I then took a deep breath and started the process to encrypt the entire hard drive. There is a wizard that will walk you through the whole process.
There are two items to be aware of before you start the process. 1. You will need a way to burn an ISO image onto a CD. The native CD burning software that comes with Windows XP will not do this. If you don’t have something like Nero or Roxio, then you can download the free program ISO Recorder software. This is a very simple, accessible ISO burning program to have and the wizard will provide you with a link where you can download the program. 2. You will not be able to continue with the encryption process until you have created this ISO CD and allowed TrueCrypt to verify that it can be read. This is a recovery CD that TrueCrypt will use, just in case there is a problem with your newly encrypted drive. Don’t lose this disk!
When you finish answering all the questions, TrueCrypt will do a reboot to simulate the changes that will be made to your hard drive. If all goes well, it will reboot again and the encryption process will begin. While the drive is being encrypted, you can use the computer as normal. I noticed no speed degradation during the process. And as an added bonus, once the whole drive encryption has completed, the computer boots and runs faster than it did before. This is something that Steve Gibson said that he had observed during his testing and I can confirm it. This is a relatively slow Compaq Presario running Windows XP Home with 1GB Ram and a 1.6Ghz AMD processor.
It took about 2 hours to encrypt the entire 40GB hard drive. It should be noted that you can cancel the drive encryption at any time. You can also decrypt the drive and remove TrueCrypt if for some reason you don’t like it.
As I mentioned above, when you boot your computer, you will now get a prompt to enter the TrueCrypt pass phrase. A blind person can verify that you are at the entry prompt, which appears about 10 seconds after pressing the power button, by pressing the down arrow key. This will produce a loud beep tone from the PC speaker. I have written to the developers about adding a few beep tones that a blind person could use to identify various error conditions and they said that they will look into implementing this in a future release. Once you enter your pass phrase and press Enter, the computer boots as usual. You will notice no other operational difference. We have been using the laptop with the encrypted drive for about a month now with no problems.
If you forget your pass phrase, there is no way to decrypt the data. You might as well get out the system recovery disk that came with your computer and fire it up, because that is the only way to turn that box of parts back into a working computer.
One caveat to be aware of is that some software publishers, such as Adobe, use a software piracy protection scheme that may clash with TrueCrypt and render your hard drive unbootable. If this occurs, you will need the TrueCrypt recovery CD that was created during the initial setup to fix the problem and regain access to your data. TrueCrypt is aware of this issue and has already taken steps to minimize the chance of these problems occurring. But as with any computer program, anything is possible (can you say Murphy’s Law?).
You can download the latest version and read the documentation at: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php Versions for Mac OSX and Linux are also available there.
In the past few years, I have come to rely on the TrueCrypt program for all of my data encryption needs. With the addition of the entire drive encryption feature, it has become that much more valuable as a data protection tool. Screen reader users can be extra thankful that the program developers have worked to keep this program accessible. And for that, I give them a great big THANK YOU!
accesswatch
review system custom -designed by Tyson Treasure