I'm thinking about using TrueCrypt to encrypt my laptop system drive (in case of theft), and am wondering if encrypting the entire drive noticeably affects drive/system performance (on XP). Does anyone here encrypt their system drive? What encryption are you using? __________________ I'm sorry that this thread isn't about dream cars or favourite movies.
oh hai. we tok abt cars, no? I've tried encrypting my hard drive, but I realised there is nothing worth stealing on it (and it slowed down my PC). But, that was on my old laptop (Vista). Didn't try it on XP.
At work everything has a form of PKI, or another encryption algorithm. But for a personal laptop, having everything encrpyted will slow the system down. Less noticable on smaller files, but the larger the files are it takes a few seconds to decrypted and stream to your screen... Your best bet would be just to get one of those $50 thumb scanners and when the laptop is turned on it will need your thumb scanned for access...this is standarded in all new sony vaios... cheers,
The thumb scanner is ok, but is no more secure than a password on your drive. If someone were to steal your laptop they could remove the HDD, stick it in the machine, assign permissions to themselves and they have your data. Personally I would get an external drive, put all your docs and personal files on it, then encrypt that drive. Do not encrypt your Entire C: that would be a very bad idea!!!!
Or, get an external hard drive and backup all your files to that, instead of your laptop HD. Then, once you are done on the PC, take your hard drive and put it elsewhere.
Unless the data is encrypted, biometric access restriction is a waste of time. You can simply remove the drive and read it from another machine. I've been reading numerous reports that suggest at worst, TrueCrypt creates practically unnoticeable slowdown. @peter anderson : what encryption were you using? That's exactly what I'm planning on doing. TC creates a prompt in the MBR, without the password, the drive is just a pile of encrypted garbage.
Info from Wikipedia (sorry cant post links yet) I would still put it on an external drive and encrypt it though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker_Drive_Encryption BitLocker is what I used (I had Ultimate), but it was crap.
Yeah, I've only read bad things about BitLocker. I've got an old P3 in my store room, I'll dust it off tomorrow and get out the stopwatch I can't use an external drive, I need the data with me, on the laptop. And I want the registry etc to be encrypted anyway.
Well... I encrypted the entire system drive on my old Presario (Sempron 3000+) this morning, and I'm very happy with it so far. I've only done basic things like email and browsing, and a little bit of Photoshopping - but I honestly can't notice any performance issues at all. I'm sure if I could be bothered to run some disk speed benchmarks I'd see a performance hit ... but as far as day to day use goes, it seems to be fine. Once you've typed in your password at boot, TrueCrypt is practically invisible.