You may be reading this article thinking that in order to access your computer you need to login with a password. If your thinking about your operating system login, then this will not provide sufficient protection over your files and your account. There are many ways you can gain full access to your operating system login account. To name one method, it is possible to remove the Windows login account password. Not only that but you can restore the original password back when you are done accessing the computer.

You may also be thinking, to access your computer you need to know the bios password. This method can be EASILY bypassed by removing the bios battery for a couple of minutes, or if you do not want anyone to know you accessed that computer you would remove the hardrive from the computer and plug it into another computer, again in this scenario you have full access to the computer, this is one of many ways to gain access.

Will encrypting my hardrive slow down my computer?

System encryption software usually use on-the-fly encryption/decryption. When a file writes to disk, the encryption software will encrypt it to ram and when a file is being access it gets decrypted from the ram. Both Truecrypt and DiskCryptor provide benchmarks of what read/write speeds to expect. You will be able to do anything you would normally do on your computer when it is encrypted without noticing any loss to your computer's performance.

So what happens after I encrypted the hardrive?

When you start your computer you will be promoted to enter your password. Once you enter the correct password you will have full access to your computer.

Should I use wipe mode?

Wipe mode first copy's the unencrypted data to ram, wipes the unencrypted data on the hardrive and then encrypts the unencrypted data in ram to your hardrive. I am not entirely sure if this is exactly how it works but you should have a better picture from that explanation.

Note: Using this option will not format your system drive.

I will briefly explain some encryption software you can use to encrypt your system.

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Bitlocker:

I do not know much about this software nor do I care, this is a closed source software and should not be trusted for encrypting your hardrive.

From the DiskCryptor FAQ:

“Trustworthy and safe cryptographic software cannot be closed source - this is an axiom“

One of many reasons I do not trust this software is from an article I read, if a certain person wants to access the hardrive, Microsoft will gladly provide the access, providing the person(s) asking for the password either has authority to access the hardrive or a person cannot access their hardrive because they have forgotten their password.

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Truecrypt:

Truecrypt is an open source encryption software. The Truecrypt developers do not allow people to modify or add code to their software. Who knows why they do not, maybe they do not want to share the profits from donation's or maybe they just want to be in control of their software.

Truecrypt has been documented very well as well as the steps for setting up your system for encryption.

Whilst encrypting you hardrive, Truecrypt will stop encrypting when you are using your computer, such as browsing the web. As this may come as an advantage it will take longer to encrypt your system.

During the prompts, you will be asked to insert a Cd into the drive, this is called the Rescue Cd, it will be used to decrypt your hardrive in the case your computer becomes unbootable.

The Rescue Cd is very slow when it comes to decrypting, it will take maybe two or even three times longer to decrypt with the Rescue Cd, on top of that Truecrypt will not allow you to decrypt your encrypted system on another operating system that has Truecrypt installed on it.

Truecrypt is known to cause blue screens of death, making your computer unbootable and forcing you to decrypt the hardrive using the Rescue Cd, which will take much longer to decrypt then decrypting with Truecrypt under Windows. This problem is known to happen on service pack upgrades. To the Truecrypt developers, THIS MUST BE ADDRESSED as this problem has been happening as far back as when it was created. Less attention should be spent on adding features and more attention on fixing this problem. If Truecrypt causes fatal problems, it is useless.

Website:
Click Here

Supported Operating Systems:
Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Encryption Algorithms:
AES 256, Serpent and Twofish

Advantages

• Open Source

• Very well documented

• Provides a Rescue Cd in the case your computer becomes unbootable

• Wide Range of operating systems supported

• Wide Range of wipe mode algorithms

• Use your computer while encrypting, without any slow downs

Disadvantages

• The developers do not allow people to modify or add code to Truecrypt

• Possibility of blue screens of death under Windows

• Does not support SHA-512 hash algorithm for disk encryption

• Rescue Cd takes a lot longer to Decrypt your system then under Windows

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DiskCryptor:

DiskCryptor is an open source encryption software. This software is truly open source which is made quite clear by their website. They do not accept donations which tells you something about their generosity.

DiskCryptor sets up your hardrive to be encrypted in just two easy steps.

DiskCryptor is documented reasonably well, though using the program is not documented that well, hopefully some day it will be. It is helpful to have some background knowledge on encrypting your hardrive before using DiskCryptor.

The developer(s) do not speak English as their native language, but if you check out the forum there are a lot of English topic's. You can also use Google to translate the forum topics to English. They have an English web page.

DiskCryptor does not provide a Rescue Cd that decrypts your hardrive in the case your system becomes unbootable. Although, they do provide the BartPE plugin which can be used to create a Windows LiveCd. You will need a Windows XP or Windows 2003 disc for this. Another way to decrypt your hardrive when a system failure has occurred is to setup a dual boot in advance, so if one operating system fails, you will be able to decrypt the defected operating system. As a last resort, you can also plug the hardrive into another computer and install DiskCryptor on that computer. DiskCryptor will decrypt your hardrive MUCH faster then Truecrypt's Rescue Cd because DiskCryptor is running under Windows.

Unlike Truecrypt, DiskCryptor does not cause blue screen of deaths.

While Encrypting you may not be able to browse the web or do certain stuff, but at the same time the encryption process will be faster, because it is not being interrupted.

Website:
Click Here

Supported Operating Systems:
Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7

Encryption Algorithms:
AES 256, Serpent and Twofish

Advantages

• Open Source

• Software does not cause blue screens of death

• Support SHA-512 hash algorithm for disk encryption

• Provides BartPE plugin to boot a Windows LiveCd with DiskCryptor
  

Disadvantages

• Only Supports Windows

• Does not provide a Rescue Cd in the case your system becomes unbootable

• Limited wipe mode algorithms

• Developer(s) do not speak English as there native language