Hace poco adquirí un disco duro para almacenar principalmente información del trabajo y de clase. Si la información solamente fuese de clase no habría prácticamente ningún problema y podría tenerlo sin cifrar, pero si lo pierdo (bastante más probable que que me lo roben) no me interesa lo más mínimo que alguien pueda acceder a mis datos privados (facturas, documentos para clientes, documentos de la seguridad social, etc.) por lo que decidí que era buen momento para cifrar los datos.
The requirements
Cross-platform
The first requirement for this task is that the encryption must be compatible with Windows and Mac, so the option to right-click in Finder and select “Encrypt” (The word encrypt does not exist!) on Mac does not work for me.
Files > 4GB
The second requirement is that, as I may save files larger than 4GB, so yes or yes I must use exFAT, the only file system supported by both Windows and Mac. Mac OS
Speed
The third requirement is that it be fast. Encoding and decoding consumes a lot of resources (and time), so encrypting a 2TB hard drive can easily take you about 20 hours (USB 2.0 at a speed of 24MB/s). For what I want to do, it must be done on the fly, so that the processor works, which is what it is for.
The solution: TrueCrypt
The best solution I found is called TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt is a free, cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) opensource program that allows you to encrypt external hard drives or some parts of them by requiring a password to access their content.
The main advantage is that it allows encrypting only part of the hard drive creating a virtual drive and that obviously works on any operating system (requirement 1). The bad thing is that the only format that truly supports cross-platform is FAT, so it does not allow files larger than 4GB, but it is something that is solved (in part) by encrypting only part of the hard drive and leaving the other part as exFAT (requirement 2… more or less).
The encryption/decryption system works completely transparent and on the fly after its first use, the only requirement is that you have to have the program installed for it to work and mount the units (virtual or not) that we have created with it (requirement 3).
I’m going to give it a try for a few days to see if it convinces me, but for now it looks good :)
| Download TrueCrypt | Program page |
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