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Home Folder Encryption

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macrumors 65816
Original poster
Is it possible to use TrueCrypt? Meaning the partition would mount before the login and I could move the entire home folder to this partition?

Any alternatives? (besides File Vault...)
 
Why not just use full-disk encryption with TrueCrypt? You can create two disk partitions:

1. Boot Partition including home folder (whole partition encrypted with TrueCrypt)
2. Other documents you don't need encrypted (in my case a load of photos and video files I don't want to slow down the system).

What you are suggesting (I think) - having a separate partition for home folder, encrypted with Truecrypt, may or may not be possible, but I don't see what the advantage is.....
 
occamsrazor said:
Why not just use full-disk encryption with TrueCrypt? You can create two disk partitions:

1. Boot Partition including home folder (whole partition encrypted with TrueCrypt)
2. Other documents you don't need encrypted (in my case a load of photos and video files I don't want to slow down the system).
Click to expand...

TrueCrypt only supports FAT (hopefully that changes one day), and Mac needs HFS for the boot partition, so your idea won't work. Only the PGP method I linked can do that currently. Also, the encryption won't cause a noticeable slow down when you have extra stuff encrypted. I use encrypted systems at home and work and don't notice any slowing except when FileVault reclaims space at reboot/shutdown. I rarely do that though.
 
angelwatt said:
TrueCrypt only supports FAT (hopefully that changes one day), and Mac needs HFS for the boot partition, so your idea won't work. Only the PGP method I linked can do that currently. Also, the encryption won't cause a noticeable slow down when you have extra stuff encrypted. I use encrypted systems at home and work and don't notice any slowing except when FileVault reclaims space at reboot/shutdown. I rarely do that though.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't realise that.... that sucks. Sorry I was only going off my TrueCrypt-on-Windows experience. The partition scheme I suggested was what I used then, I just figured (wrongly, it seems) that TrueCrypt had the same functionality on Mac.
 
PS - You're right that encryption doesn't slow things down much. I was quite happy with Truecrypt system-encryption under Windows.
But for editing many GBs of video and large numbers of high-res photos - neither of which needed encryption - I figured it made more sense to store them on another partition to avoid any slowdown at all, and also to keep CPU/battery usage to a minimum, given that it was a laptop.
 
Thanks to everyone for your answers.


occamsrazor: As they told you, great idea which would be perfect - if True Crypt supported system disk encryption.

angelwatt: I was afraid of that...


I use Dropbox to backup my data. It works on-the-fly and it supports revisions. The problem is, that if I put Dropxbox folder inside File Vault, I loose the search capabilities (it's some weird bug...).

It would be ideal if TrueCrypt could start before login, ask for the password and mount the volume.

I know about PGP supporting system disk encryption, but I prefer open software when dealing with encryption.
 
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