For users who are affected by the recent TrueCrypt security issue, DiskCryptor is a great alternative to TrueCrypt for Windows, and it can be used to encrypt and protect all data containers or partitions including the system partition (OS-installed partition). If you are switching over from TrueCrypt, here is how you can use DiskCryptor to encrypt partitions in Windows
Encrypt Partitions using DiskCryptor
Download DiskCryptor from its official site and install it like any other software. Once installed, you may have to restart your Windows machine.
After the restart, launch DiskCryptor. You will be prompted by Windows UAC (User Access Control). Click the “Yes” button to continue.
Once DiskCryptor is opened, it will list all the connected drives and partitions including the system partition.
Before doing anything, it is good to benchmark the speed of available encryption algorithms. The faster the encryption speed is, the less time it takes to encrypt and decrypt the drive or partition. To benchmark the algorithms, navigate to “Tools -> Benchmark.” This will open up the “Encryption Benchmark” window; click on the “Benchmark” button to start the process. Once the bench-marking process is completed, you will see the results which will look something like the image below. According to the results, you can select the algorithm you would like to use.
To encrypt a drive using DiskCryptor, select the drive or partition and click on the “Encrypt” button to start encrypting.
The above action will open the “Encryption Settings” window. Select the encryption algorithm, wipe mode and click on the “Next” button to continue.
Note: The wipe mode in DiskCryptor doesn’t necessarily delete the data in the drive. It analyses the sectors, wipes the data and rewrites it with the encrypted data. Simply put, when wipe mode is used, all your previous data stays intact, but DiskCryptor encrypts all that remnant data making it impossible to recover that data using any specialized tools. If you are unsure of wipe mode, then it is recommended that you just leave the option as “None”. Click here to know more about wipe mode in DiskCryptor.
DiskCryptor will ask for the volume password, so go ahead and use some strong password. As you can see from the below image, I have created a sixteen-character password with the combination of caps, lower case, numbers and special characters. Once you are done entering the password twice, click on the “Ok” button to start encrypting the selected drive.
Depending on the drive size and algorithm you have selected, it will take quite a while to encrypt the whole drive.
Once the encryption is completed, the encrypted drive will be mounted automatically so that you can start using it immediately.
Hopefully that helps, and do comment below to share your thoughts and experiences using DiskCryptor.
