External Drive Recommendations, need encryption

Hi all,

I am looking for recommendations for an external HD, 750GB or more, USB2 + firewire at least, and that have encryption features.

I know the older Seagate Free Agent Pro devices had encryption features, just not sure what currently available stuff does.

If you have vista ultimate, you automatically have a fairly high level HDD encryption tool in bitlocker. Hardware encryption is becoming less important as CPU speeds increase, and many of the good old models are no longer available. I would suggest good encryption software and any decent usb 2 drive, but if you want a drive that states encryption capabilities, black armor from seagate would do the trick. http://www.seagate.com …karmor/blackarm​or_ws_110/

Thanks. I don't use Vista Ultimate. I'm looking for an additional drive that I can synch once or twice a month, and leave in my desk at work, thats why I'm looking for something with encryption. I'm not that worried about the drive being physically stolen, but I'd rather not have all of my work freely available if that did happen.

BluewookieJim wrote in post #8267603
Thanks. I don't use Vista Ultimate. I'm looking for an additional drive that I can synch once or twice a month, and leave in my desk at work, thats why I'm looking for something with encryption. I'm not that worried about the drive being physically stolen, but I'd rather not have all of my work freely available if that did happen.

http://otfedb.sdean12.​org/

You can check to see if any of the programs for windows supports both portable mode and any other criteria you have. Best alternative for exactly that. If not, the only other things I know right now are sandisk and other company's encrypted flash drives, but that's only if you need less storage.

you could create a giant truecrypt volume on an external drive and do that. it's what I do for the backup drive I keep at work.

Second for TrueCrypt. Any drive you pick + TrueCrypt and you'll save some $$$.

A little advice however, you don't want strong encryption on a USB unless you don't care too much about speed.

That might work, I use Syncback to replicate/synchronize my libraries and stuff to an FTP server and several external drives I have here. I'm not that worried about speed, as I'll only probably be updating this drive once or twice per month.

Another vote for SyncBack.
Any new or modified file gets automatically backed up to my external drive everyday at 6PM. I don't even have to give it a second thought. I don't encrypt but the option is there.

Am I right in saying that if your work is physically stolen on a hard-drive; no amount of encryption will stop someone that really want's to get into it? There are many programs that run algorithms to get into these things if time isn't a factor.

I think that the only way to get into a true crypt drive is to read the ram where it stores the keys in the brief second or two after the ram loses power.

mnaz wrote in post #8269957
I think that the only way to get into a true crypt drive is to read the ram where it stores the keys in the brief second or two after the ram loses power.

much longer than few seconds, and when it's frozen, you can get away with a few hours. you don't even need to directly access the ram in a majority of cases, just you're good old firewire connection can be used. But yea, it's difficult to get the stored information unless you are really want to get to it, and in most cases like that you won't be able to stop them anyway

mnaz wrote in post #8269957
I think that the only way to get into a true crypt drive is to read the ram where it stores the keys in the brief second or two after the ram loses power.

I suppose it's like a very good bicycle lock, yes any lock and chain can get cut by a very determined thief, but still, a good lock will prevent 95% of the thieves from taking your bike... reducing the likelihood of a theft dramatically.

In the case of the HD, most thefts, like 99% would be just to get the hardware and steal it for someone else' use, they would not even be interested in the data. Having it encrypted would put off any casual viewing,.. and likely stop that 99% of thieves from ever trying to break into it.

twofruitz wrote in post #8269922
Am I right in saying that if your work is physically stolen on a hard-drive; no amount of encryption will stop someone that really want's to get into it? There are many programs that run algorithms to get into these things if time isn't a factor.

Yes and no, while technically it's possible to break any algorithm through a brute force attack, the larger your key, the longer it takes to do this.

AES-256 is approved for top secret government encryption, Serpent (which is also allowed for Truecrypt) while slower, is more unbreakable than AES, so yes, it's possible to break it, but for now the amount of time/computing power to break it is non-existant.

... and who would apply that computing power to your FreeAgent go filled with family snapshots?
No one.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #8273420
... and who would apply that computing power to your FreeAgent go filled with family snapshots?
No one.

You'd be surprised. And it does not require much computing power to say, use AES-Serpent encryption as long as you have a 2.5Ghz+ CPU and an eSATA HDD. I use encryption on all my work systems and I hardly notice it compared with my home computers.

My advice, it costs nothing to experiment with TrueCrypt and try different encryption methods and see if speed becomes a problem. TrueCrypt also comes with a benchmark that will show you the fastest and slowest methods.