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Encrypting external disk and backup also on 2nd external Disk

P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Hi,

As I have a MBP 17" and a MBA Ultimate 11.6" I have copied all data that I need onto a 1 TB external disk and made 4 partitions on it, one for each type of data ( movies/music, data , software etc etc ).

1. I want to password lock/encrypt it yet be able to access it from both laptops as regular data would be.

2. I want to create a backup of the 1 TB disk above, on to another 1 TB external disk and make it encrypted/password protected also. Maybe follow the partition structure maybe not, thats not paramount.

What's the best way (apart from .dmg file) to achieve this given the data on disk in point 1 will change often as I create/edit more files.

The reason I want this is as I travel and carry the 2 external drives. I don't want to be worried about data security if a disk is lost.

I take a backup of the disk in point 1 anyway through time machine on another 1 TB 3.5" disk at home so there is always a copy at home.

Thanks.

Preetinder
 
I use TrueCrypt for most of my encryption needs. You just mount the partitions/disk images as need be and they are accessed the same way as any volume.
 
I use PGP whole disk encryption which works very well to protect an entire disk. I've not had it work as well when using partitions (permission problems for a 2nd user - permissions and all else work great for the 'administrator').

I'm curious as to why you went to the effort to partition the external disk as it makes you life more difficult to manage the disk. Simply formatting it as one partition and using folders to separate the types of data would seem to accomplish your goal.
 
Thank you for your comments :

Can I ask what is the impact of the truecrypt on time machine back ups and hard disk life ? How is the speed of encryption and decryption.

I had PGP for Win a few years back, its a great piece of software, however with Mac and a bootcamp I am not comfortable with encrypting the laptop. I don't have sufficient tech skills to trouble shoot should anything go wrong.

Since my data is ported to the external disks, I recon the data is secured and backed up anyway, so the loss of a laptop should be monetary loss only.

How about the backup of 1 TB to another 1 TB ? How are you dealing with such a requirement.

I did the partition to organise the data types and then to make sure if disk fails possibly I can recover some data off it because of partitions....

Thanks

Preetinder
 
Thanks fo the Espionage link : I have used it for the folder based encryption. I haven't attempted to encrypt a 300GB Music/Movies folder/partition which I am sacred would be a slow and long process !

PGP - Can the PGP be used for encrypting external disk only ? Its quite an investment (about USD 170), plus recurring annual charges to keep on getting updates as the operating system gets updates. But its a tried and tested method and was a huge sense of relief when I was using it on my Windows laptop.

TrueCrypt - looks intresting, and its fee. Do you have experiences with Truecrypt and Time Machine or other backups software, are there any issues/clashes, unresolved "tread carefully" caveats ?
 
Simple solution

Simple solution is to use Filevault and Time Machine. Your backups will be encrypted and your computer secure as well. While Filevault has its detractors, third-party encryption can have issues too. Go with an all-Apple-supported solution, and I think you will have the fewest problems and easiest setup. And if you have trouble, you can call on Apple for support.

Oh, never mind. Upon re-reading the OP, it looks like you are using the externals for more than just backups.
 
I've never noticed any real speed degradation from using encryption. I think the only time that really comes into play is when editing large images and video. I mostly work with smaller encrypted volumes (< 1GB), but also have some 100GB+ volumes for backups that have never become corrupt or anything. I also tend to do backups over the network so that's often my speed bottleneck.

I don't currently backup my 1TB drive as it holds all of my backups, but have considered getting a secondary one for off-site backups. I'd likely setup the partitions the same to match it, then use a bash script with rsync to run the actual backups on-demand.
 
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