TrueCrypt for Flash Drive

[magna05]

Hi,

I'm having trouble understanding the logic of TrueCrypt. I've a few questions to ask.

I want to install on my USB stick a portable version.

At present when I create an encrypted file container and setup a password, nothing happens.

When I log to the drive all i see is a new TrueCrypt file on my stick.

What is supposed to happen when I log to the drive? Should I immediately be prompted for a password?

Once I've installed TrueCrypt & If for some reason I have to re-format the hard disk & re-install Windows,
will I be able to gain access to my stick?

magna05.

[anandasim]

Hi,

I'm having trouble understanding the logic of TrueCrypt. I've a few questions to ask.

I want to install on my USB stick a portable version.


At present when I create an encrypted file container and setup a password, nothing happens.

You have to mount the drive using TrueCrypt. Mounting the drive means
a. running Truecrypt
b. nominating the .TC file
c. Assigning a drive letter
d. Typing in your password

When I log to the drive all i see is a new TrueCrypt file on my stick.

You don't log on to a drive. That isn't the jargon. You attach or mount a drive.

What is supposed to happen when I log to the drive? Should I immediately be prompted for a password?

When you first push your USB Flash stick into the USB slot of the computer, the .TC file is not mounted. It looks like a file. That's all it does.
To mount a .TC file as a drive letter, you will be
a. running Truecrypt
b. nominating the .TC file
c. Assigning a drive letter
d. Typing in your password

Once I've installed TrueCrypt & If for some reason I have to re-format the hard disk & re-install Windows,
will I be able to gain access to my stick?

The .tc file contains the data for the drive and your password.

To use the mount the .tc file on any computer, you need to have somewhere (maybe on the USB flash itself) the following files in any folder:

truecrypt-x64.sys
truecrypt.sys
TrueCrypt Format.exe
TrueCrypt.exe

You can copy these files to your USB Flash drive. They are located in c:\program files\TrueCrypt.

[magna05]

Hi ananadism,

Thanks for the steps.

I know how to create a standard file container and I've done so.The .TC file now resides on the stick.

When I navigate through My Computer and click open the drive I'm not prompted by TC to mount the drive.

It appears at present that TC is not functional at all. I've obviously overlooked something or missed an important step in the setup process.

magna05

[anandasim]

Hi ananadism,

Thanks for the steps.

I know how to create a standard file container and I've done so.The .TC file now resides on the stick.

Good

When I navigate through My Computer and click open the drive I'm not prompted by TC to mount the drive.

It appears at present that TC is not functional at all. I've obviously overlooked something or missed an important step in the setup process.

magna05

For the convenience of man-in-the-street users, Windows has established two ideas.

Idea 1: that you don't need to go to the Start Menu or run a program .exe file by double clicking on it. Windows has files associations - e.g. if you see a .doc file, then when you double click that file, Word launches

Idea 2: that when you plug in a USB stick or put a DVD/CD into the drive, Windows examines that media for instructions or info and then automagically launches a program or a chooser to get something going.

Both ideas can be carried out by TrueCrypt if you install it in non portable mode. There should one or two checkboxes you get to set on when you install TrueCrypt.

If however, you install TrueCrypt in portable mode, the installer does you a favour by allowing you to copy all those system files I mentioned to your USB stick - you need those files on the USB stick because the idea of portability is that you can use the files and your documents on any machine.

In portable mode, however, TC will not implement Idea 1 or Idea 2. It cannot because you are instructing TrueCrypt to place those files in any arbitrary folder on any drive and Windows will have no memory of where those files are placed.

Secondly, most people who use TrueCrypt use it to protect confidentiality and not to lead outsiders to understand this. Thus, we don't want TrueCrypt to launch automagically when you double click a .tc file - we might not even want to call our container file .tc so that no one knows we have a TrueCrypt file. Thus if someone goes to the Qantas lounge and finds our USB stick with a file called leavemealone.nothing they have no clue that it is a TrueCrypt file. Additionally we don't want any TrueCrypt computer to automagically launch TrueCrypt and shows us a dialog to enter password - because we don't want outsiders to know that this USB Flash contains any important info. The concept is that if someone knows it is a Truecrypt file, even if they don't know the password, a thousand monkeys typing millions of key strokes could break our password.

A. To launch TrueCrypt, you have to find where TrueCrypt.exe is, double click it. A dialog will open. You will then proceed in
b. nominating the .TC file
c. Assigning a drive letter
d. Typing in your password

[magna05]

Well explained anandasim,

The other issue I have is that all the folders & data I've copied across or saved to the stick have not been encrypted.

At present there's no point in mounting the drive at all. This is what I mean by TC not being functional.

How do I arrange on the fly encryption?

Thanks magna05

[anandasim]

Well explained anandasim,

The other issue I have is that all the folders & data I've copied across or saved to the stick have not been encrypted.

At present there's no point in mounting the drive at all. This is what I mean by TC not being functional.

How do I arrange on the fly encryption?

Thanks magna05

I'm not sure we're reading from the same page.

1. If you have not mounted the TC drive, you will only see the .tc file on your USB Flash stick. For example, C: is your hard disk, D: is your CD/DVD, E: is your Flash USB. If you have inserted the Flash USB but have not mounted the TC drive, all you will see is C: D: and E:. Drive E: is the host drive for your .tc file.

2. Once you mount the TC drive, you will now see F: or whatever drive letter you have assigned to to be the TC drive. Thus you will now have C: D: E: and F:

To encrypt a file or folder:

3. Copy the file or folder to F: - you will not see F: if you have not carried out step 2.

After copying the files and folders, to DISMOUNT the TC drive,

4. Look at your Windows system tray icon (bottom right of your screen, same row as your Start Menu, right click on the TrueCrypt icon and then choose "Dismount".

After you do step 4, you will now only have C: D: E: - there will be no F:
You will not be able to see your files and folders that you copied to F:

If you want to use your files and folders that you copied to F:, you need to carry out Step 2 again.

[magna05]

1. If you have not mounted the TC drive, you will only see the .tc file on your USB Flash stick. For example, C: is your hard disk, D: is your CD/DVD, E: is your Flash USB. If you have inserted the Flash USB but have not mounted the TC drive, all you will see is C: D: and E:. Drive E: is the host drive for your .tc file.

2. Once you mount the TC drive, you will now see F: or whatever drive letter you have assigned to to be the TC drive. Thus you will now have C: D: E: and F:

To encrypt a file or folder:

3. Copy the file or folder to F: - you will not see F: if you have not carried out step 2.

After copying the files and folders, to DISMOUNT the TC drive,

4. Look at your Windows system tray icon (bottom right of your screen, same row as your Start Menu, right click on the TrueCrypt icon and then choose "Dismount".

After you do step 4, you will now only have C: D: E: - there will be no F:
You will not be able to see your files and folders that you copied to F:

If you want to use your files and folders that you copied to F:, you need to carry out Step 2 again.

Hi anandasim,

Ok the situation is as follows:

The USB drive is host E: It contains the newly created TC file container.

I've mounted a virtual drive as M.

Host drive E has a capacity is 16Gig, virtual host drive M has a capacity of only 764K.

I tried to copy some files across to drive M and received a message saying not enough 'disk space'. Obviously I still don't understand what I'm doing

magna05.

[anandasim]

Hi anandasim,

Ok the situation is as follows:

The USB drive is host E: It contains the newly created TC file container.

I've mounted a virtual drive as M.

Host drive E has a capacity is 16Gig, virtual host drive M has a capacity of only 764K.

I tried to copy some files across to drive M and received a message saying not enough 'disk space'. Obviously I still don't understand what I'm doing

magna05.

Sorry mate, I empathise with you.

What happens is, you created a virtual drive that is too small.

When you create a virtual drive file - the TrueCrypt button - Create -, next screen is what name of file would you like, next screen is what size would you like.
You have to type in the size that is appropriate. For example, your host drive is 16Gb maybe you make a drive that is 15.5Gb - there may be a bug in the box where you type that, it might not accept the dot decimal point so you might have to choose Mb and type 1550 Mb.

[magna05]

What happens is, you created a virtual drive that is too small.

When you create a virtual drive file - the Truecrypt button - Create -, next screen is what name of file would you like, next screen is what size would you like.
You have to type in the size that is appropriate. For example, your host drive is 16Gb maybe you make a drive that is 15.5Gb - there may be a bug in the box where you type that, it might not accept the dot decimal point so you might have to choose Mb and type 1550 Mb.

Hi anandasim,

For an encrypted file container:

I entered the file size of 14.9 Gb.

I then received the following error: Files larger than 4Gb cannot be stored on a FAT32 system.

Therefore, file hosted Truecrypt volumes (containers) stored on a FAT32 file system cannot be larger than 4Gb.

Now I don't what to do?

magna05

[anandasim]

For an encrypted file container:

I entered the file size of 14.9 Gb.

I then received the following error: Files larger than 4Gb cannot be stored on a FAT32 system.

Therefore, file hosted Truecrypt volumes (containers) stored on a FAT32 file system cannot be larger than 4Gb.

Now I don't what to do?

magna05

1. I used to pay AUD 110 for flash USB sticks. I got a 64Mb one, then a 128Mb one and so on. Yesterday I paid less than AUD 10 for a 4Gb one. That is huge! You must have even more money, you bought a huge USB Flash. That's why you are having trouble - you are using gear which is "bleeding edge".

2. USB Flash drives are formatted to FAT32 as the host. FAT32 hosts on USB or your internal hard disk cannot be more then 4Gb. That's why lots of our hard disks are formatted NTFS so that this is not an issue. But normally we don't need 4Gb of file size unless it is a video file. So we don't hit the bleeding edge.

3. But you want to put many files into one encrypted container. Thus you are hitting the bleeding edge because the encypted container has to be a file on the host and the host is FAT32.

A rational thing to do for most purposes is not to store all your eggs in one basket. If your file on the host is huge and something bad happens, the whole container is corrupted and all the files inside are killed.

Either format the host USB filesystem as NTFS. Then when you create the TrueCrypt container, it can be larger than 4Gb.

or

Create TrueCrypt files of less than 4Gb. You will then make 4 such files. If one of these files gets corrupted, you haven't lost content on the other container files.

or create a TrueCrypt volume / partition on the USB Flash directly without filesystem. Instructions in the TrueCrypt manual.

[magna05]

Hi anandasim,

All is good now, formatted the USB stick to NTFS.

Then created a TrueCrypt file container greater than 4GB

Thanks for all your helpful advice.

magna05