TrueCrypt 6.0a - Encrypting your AA1

Hi all,
I was wondering if someone has already tested TrueCrypt with the AA1?
Specifically, I would be interested to encrypt the full system volume. I am quite sure there shouldnt be any problems with that, but was concerned about the performance hit the AA1 takes from it.
I am running a A150, 120GB HD and WinXP Pro.
I would appreciate any feedback you may have.

thanks
N

 

I'm running an encrypted system drive on my 8GB SSD, works great!

 

sort of surprising given the real time crypt-decrypt and the SSD notorious dislike for multiple writes.. good to know though.
Have you followed a guide to do the whole process or you've just given it a go?
Any suggestions to minimise chances of errors?

thanks
N

 

I've installed in on a few computers before, so just go for it!
I should mention that I use EWF in combination with TC, so I don't get any disk writes at all!

 

thanks very much for your feedback mate,

Has anyone else tried it too?
Any comments/considerations are most welcome guys!

thanks
N

 

I'm using truecrypt encrypted system partition with vista, and am satisfied with performance for everyday use. However, I think it takes longer to boot up, and copying things to the encrypted partition is slower than unencrypted copying. Because of this, I have it set up with a 12gb encrypted OS partition, and then a 100gb partition for media and other things that don't need encrypting. This seems to work quite well.

It was very easy to set up, can't remember exactly how long it took to encrypt but I think it was something like 30mins, maybe less. The hardest part was remembering the long password.

 

There's an article about system wide encryption on the atom platform but i can't seem to find it now. iirc the biggest performance difference on any benchmark was around 12-15%.

I think it would be worthwhile having someone recompile the linux and windows versions of truecrypt with intel atom optimizations (as briefly noted here: http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/07/installing-truecrypt-on-acer-aspire-one.html) and post the binaries here if possible.

 

@Veazer

I did read the article, but thats for Linux.
I am looking to install it on WinXP.
..
and what do you mean recompile for WinXP optimized to atom?
and it would be doable only from a Linux machine in any case.

 

What is EWF ? I am sure is not Earth Wind and Fire .....

Is this windows ?

 

Why would it only be doable from a linux machine? Truecrypt provides source code for windows as well. Or is the new compiler linux only?

 

you are correct..
I didnt know that... will look in to this as soon as I have some time then..

thanks
N

 

Ok
I have installed Truecrypt 6.0a and encrypted my system partition, everything went well and I have now a fully encrypted system.
I did not measure the boot time of XP yet, but will do asap. it is indeed a few seconds longer than before but is nothing too noticeable. Boot has never failed so far, and Im using the AA1 for development with Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007 etc.

N

 

NMESISCA,


Just wondering did you just encrypt the windows partition.


Does the app allow you to just encrypt it or is the entire hard drive encrypted.



Once the encrypted is done can the acer restore still be run should you need to at any stage?

 

You can choose if you want only the system partition to be encrypted, or the full drive.

I have not tried restoring with the CD to be honest.
However, my guess is that you should be able to restore on the ollowing conditions:
- if the recovery CD recovers the default installation only on the primary partition, then you will lose the encrypted partition.
- even if the recovery CD can recover to any of your hard drive's partitions, you will most likely lose the ability to boot to the encrypted partition you already had, as the MBR will be overwritten by the recovery process.

In theory, this is why Truecrypt asks you if/what multiple OS are installed on the HD you want to encrypt, so that it can create a bootloader that takes that in to account.
You can workaround this issue by installing all the OS you want on the different partitions, and then running truecrypt and encrypt what you need.

hope this helps,
N

 

Any BSOD problems? I was having loads of them on a Dell 1501, dual core athlon, and it turns out that Truecrypt does not behave well with dual core and ntfs formatted truecrypt volumes. i switched it to fat32 and the bsods went away completely. I was wondering if the hyperthreading on the atom might have the same issue or if it only relates to systems with 2 physical cores.

 

not a single problem so far
im actually impressed