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I have an external multimedia hard drive (1.36TB). I made 4 partitions of 350GB each. Then I shredded the free disc space of all the partitions.

Now I want to put Truecrypt on the disk. I can't put it on all 4 Partitions. If I put it on all 4 Partitions, I can't use the hard drive for watching TV or films. So I want to lock 3 partitions and leave one open.

I am worried that I won't get the full Truecrypt protection. Since one partition is open, you can just go to the computer, access the open partition, reformat the other three, then the password is gone and the you can run a file recovery program.

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  • Formatting the encrypted ones does not help; that area remains encrypted and any data stored there cannot be recovered.
    – Overmind
    Feb 25, 2019 at 8:09

1 Answer 1

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With TryeCrypt, the files are encrypted on the hard disk, so if an attacker formats the partitions and he use a recovery software, the files will still be encrypted. By the way, even if all your parition would be encrypted, an attack could still format your hard drive.

The attacker needs the key to decrypt your files. The key is kept in the RAM of the computer who is decrypting the files. You must protect your computer from deep freeze attacks and of course you need to protect your computer from key logger that would steel your key when you type it. Also, you need to put a long key so a brute force attack will fail to decrypt your files.

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  • Hey Thanks for the really quick Answer So if the Hard Drive is encryptet any Futer data that i put on there will be encryptet to right ? After i am finishd with my external i want to use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) and clear out all the internal Hard Drives and encrypt them to Now to be sure that i dont get a keylogger witch anti vire Programm would you recommend i always used anti vire but i am not really sure that this is the best Programm
    – user24964
    Apr 19, 2013 at 13:34
  • Yes, all files will be encrypted while you use the drive that is configured with TrueCrypt. To choose a good AV you can refer to this chart av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/… Also, Avast and Microsoft Security Essential are free and are fine. If you download an illegal anti-virus, you could get a virus from it.
    – Francois Valiquette
    Apr 19, 2013 at 13:39
  • Just one More thing if i encrypted a hard drive will the deleted Files that used to be on the drive also be encrypted ? Ore is it safer to shredder it before hand ?
    – user24964
    Apr 19, 2013 at 16:15
  • Truecrypt is volume level encryption. Anything within that truecrypt volume will be encrypted. Any files, filesystem meta-data, deleted files. Each and every block is encrypted. The only way to access is it is by decrypting it.
    – Zoredache
    Apr 19, 2013 at 17:00
  • @user24964 I am not sure on this one. It would depend of how TrueCrypt is made. To be sure, don't take any chance and wipe your disk carefully.
    – Francois Valiquette
    Apr 19, 2013 at 17:10

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