How to encrypt your porn folder

[loinburger]

You can encrypt your data via NTFS, but odds are that your Windows password sucks and can be broken with Ophcrack or a similar tool. My Windows password is probably better than most, but my Truecrypt password is still 3 times the length of my Windows password.

Some of these instructions may be extraneous, I've been using this program for quite awhile and they may have removed some of the quirks. Still, these instructions will work, even if one or two aren't strictly necessary.

1. Download and install Truecrypt. When asked, associate .tc files with Truecrypt.

2. Create the container file, [filename].tc. (F'rinstance, create a new text document, and rename it to [filename].tc) You may need to go to control panel -> folder options, go to the "view" tab, and uncheck "hide extensions for known file types." When you rename "New Text Document.txt" to "[filename].tc" then Windows will ask you to confirm that you want to change the file extension, say "yes." Important: make sure that [filename].tc is not encrypted or compressed via NTFS. Right-click the file, select "properties", click "advanced," and make sure that the "compressed" and "encrypted" properties are unchecked.

3. Open Truecrypt, go to Settings -> Preferences. Check "enable Truecrypt background task" and uncheck "cache passwords."

4. Open Truecrypt, go to Volumes -> Create New Volumes. Select "Create Encrypted File Container" (the top and default option). Next, select "Standard Volume" (the top and default option).
On the next screen check "Never Save History" and then select [filename].tc that you created in step 2 (you'll be asked to confirm that you want to replace the file).
For encryption options, select AES (the top and default option) for encryption and SHA-512 (the second and non-default option) for hashing.
Next, select the volume size.
Next, enter a password. Make this a long password, the hash function means that the password essentially has no max length. I suggest you enter a memorable phrase, e.g. "Mary had a little lamb." This is case-sensitive.
Next, choose NTFS for the file system (if the container is large enough to permit it, otherwise choose FAT). You will have the option of creating a dynamic container: this will create an encrypted container that is the size of the contained data instead of the size of the container's max capacity (e.g., a non-dynamic 2GB container always takes up 2GB of disc space regardless of how much data is in it, whereas a dynamic 2GB container would only take up 1GB of disc space if it only contained 1GB of data), at the cost of reduced performance compared to a non-dynamic container. I always leave "dynamic" unchecked, but it's your call. Finally, hit "format." This will take a long time if you have a large container (unless you made the container "dynamic").

5. Finally, to mount the encrypted container, just double-click it in Explorer. This will open Truecrypt, which will display the available drive letters. Select one, click "mount," enter the password, and there you go.

Extras

6. If you are creating shortcuts from the encrypted partition to the unencrypted partition (e.g. I have a Firefox shortcut in my quick launch bar that points to the Firefox program in the encrypted partition) then you must mount the container on the same letter each time or the shortcuts won't work. To avoid problems, mount the container(s) to the drive(s) you intend to use. Open Truecrypt, go to Volumes -> Save currently mounted volumes as favorites. Now when you open Truecrypt, go to Volumes -> Mount favorite volumes, and the same drive letters will be selected as last time.

7. You have the option of encrypting partitions rather than file containers. Do NOT do this on a non-fixed drive. If the partitions get ****ed up (as they are wont to do on non-fixed drives) then it is a colossal pain in the ass to recover the encrypted partition. It is much easier to recover an encrypted file container in a standard partition.

8. If you have multiple encrypted containers/partitions that use the same password, then you may want to select "cache passwords" - this means that you'll enter your password once, instead of once per container/partition.

9. Don't use this program on an SSD, as it will severely degrade performance. On a standard hard drive the performance hit is negligible.

10. If for some reason you're worried that you may have to disclose your password (e.g. if the RIAA sues you), then create a "hidden container/partition." The way this works is that the container has two passwords: the standard password and the hidden password. Let's say you create a 4GB FAT container with a 3GB NTFS hidden container - enter the standard password and you've got a 4GB FAT virtual partition, enter the hidden password and instead you've got the 3GB NTFS virtual partition. Obviously if you put more than 1GB of data on the standard partition then you may destroy data on the hidden partition - the standard partition is not intended of day-to-day use, but instead is merely there for plausible deniability. If you're only concerned about privacy (e.g. in case your laptop is stolen) then there's no need to monkey around with hidden containers/partitions.

11. You can encrypt your system partition, but I don't recommend this - it may have unintended side-effects with disk imaging programs etc.

[loinburger]

One more thing: if you want to share your virtual partition on your network, then you'll need to re-share it every time you mount the partition. What I've done is to install the free versions of Glary Utilities, which executes "C:\share.bat" sixty seconds after I boot my computer (presumably I've mounted my encrypted partition by this point). share.bat contains "net share Download=D:\Download /grant:everyone,full", without the quotes, where "Download" is the name that's visible on the network, "D:\Download" is the folder I'm sharing, and "/grant:everyone,full" gives everybody on the network read/write access to the folder.

[N35t0r]

And how do I encript my important-files-that-are-not-porn folder?

[loinburger]

Why ever would you want to do that???

[loinburger]

Another option, suitable for backups, is to use 7-zip to compress+encrypt a folder. (You can also do this with the .zip format, but this won't encrypt the file names in the container; the .7z format provides the option of encrypting the contents and file names. This is also useful if you want to email an .exe or .bat etc to somebody, something that most (all?) email programs will disallow - compress+encrypt the file using 7-zip using the password 1234 (or whatever), and then your email program and the recipients' programs won't be able to detect that you're emailing an executable.) I have an encrypted partition on my laptop with my Documents folder (which contains sensitive information such as tax returns), and an external hard drive I use for backups - rather than creating an encrypted file container on the external hard drive, all I've done is to compress+encrypt the Documents folder. 7-zip uses AES-256 the same as Truecrypt.

[N35t0r]

Why ever would you want to do that???

You mean, 'you know there's no such folder', surely?

Another option, suitable for backups, is to use 7-zip to compress+encrypt a folder. (You can also do this with the .zip format, but this won't encrypt the file names in the container; the .7z format provides the option of encrypting the contents and file names. This is also useful if you want to email an .exe or .bat etc to somebody, something that most (all?) email programs will disallow - compress+encrypt the file using 7-zip using the password 1234 (or whatever), and then your email program and the recipients' programs won't be able to detect that you're emailing an executable.) I have an encrypted partition on my laptop with my Documents folder (which contains sensitive information such as tax returns), and an external hard drive I use for backups - rather than creating an encrypted file container on the external hard drive, all I've done is to compress+encrypt the Documents folder. 7-zip uses AES-256 the same as Truecrypt.

Yeah, that's what I do when I need to email executables.

I use WinRAR though. Technically illegal, since it's only a 30-day trial, but I never liked 7-zip's interface (and by that, I mean I'm too used to winrar's)

It never occured to me it would also be useful for an encrypted backup, but I´ve never needed one of those.

I've also created multipart 'compressed' files with the 'no compression' option selected to split a large file into more comfortable chunks (to fit a DVD9 image into two DVD5's, f'rinstance), as they uncompress in a breeze... this might be a good idea if you want to create an encripted backup, and don't need it to be smaller in size.

[loinburger]

I've used 7-zip's "no-compression compression" option when backing up things like family photos / videos where even when using maximum compression I might get a 1% savings. Even if I'm not actually encrypting the data, in my experience it's faster to transfer a 2GB file over a network compared to transferring 2000 1MB files.

Unfortunately, 7-zip's multipart options are very limited - you can break up the files into CD-sized chunks, or into DVD5-sized chunks, or into 3.5" floppy-sized chunks, and that's it. I used to break up my encrypted+compressed Documents.7z file into 20MB chunks so that I could email them to myself (that is, until Google started temporarily shutting down my account for sending too many large attachments all at once), and I had to use a separate program to do the chunking.

[loinburger]

I forgot one more detail:

12. If you use a partition-editing/recovery tool, e.g. Partition Wizard, and you have an encrypted partition (as opposed to an encrypted file container), then the partition tool may say something along the lines of "we found a weird-looking partition, want us to fix it?" Answer "No," otherwise the tool may overwrite the encrypted partition's header. (This is not disastrous, because Truecrypt backs up the header and can restore it; still, it's easier to avoid the problem than than to fix the problem after the fact.)

[Oncle Boris]

Given that my porn stash involves nothing else than heterosexual sex between consenting adults, I am not very concerned about people discovering it.

[Dinner]

I'm not sure why I'd want to encrypt my porn folder.

[loinburger]

If everything on your computer is legally acquired (e.g. no mp3's downloaded from demonoid), and you don't have any documents containing your social security number or bank account numbers or anything else like that, then there's no reason to use encryption. (There's really no reason not to use encryption given the negligible cost, but to each their own.) There's a slim possibility that you'll become a person of interest in a heavily leaked FBI investigation in which case late night talk show hosts might make jokes about the size of your porn folder or the embarrassingly large number of legally downloaded Barry Manilow songs on your hard drive or whatever, but in all likelihood you'll instead run into trouble with a computer thief or the RIAA or a similar entity.

Bear in mind that data can often be recovered from an unencrypted hard drive even after the file or folder has been deleted, so e.g. deleting the PDF of your tax return may not actually remove it from the hard drive. Use eraser or a similar program if you want to be assured of a file's or folder's deletion. (Don't use anything more than a 3-pass method, and a 1-pass method ought to suffice. If you use the 35-pass method that is sometimes the program's default then you're just going to wear out your hard drive.)

[howardbass201]

Why ever would you want to do that???

He don't want to show them to other.