Comments on: DiskCryptor: Entire Hard Drive Encryption

By: Vishnu

Vishnu — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:32:30 +0000

Edit to my previous post regarding the term “volume encryption”:

The terminology used in this industry is often confusing and conflicting. This article by Jetico clarifies things:
[jetico.com]

The problem is that the term “volume encryption” is sometimes used to refer container encryption, whereby a file was encrypted and mounted as a virtual volume. This terminology seems to have changed around the time MS released its BitLocker product and referred to it as Full Volume Encryption, which allows for multiple physical drives to be fully encrypted (just as FDE products are) but logically addressed as one volume (i.e. one drive letter).

But basically what I was getting it as that DiskCryptor has an overall better approach – leaner/meaner/cleaner mode of operation than TrueCrypt – because it has started out with a smarter approach.

All in all, at this point for people who truly care about their data, I think that the good commercial solutions (such as PGP Wholedisk, McAfee Endpoint, Winmagic SecureDoc, Checkpoint, etc) are still far superior because they are optimized/faster, they offer better key management and recovery solutions, more stability, support for tokens, etc.

By: Vishnu

Vishnu — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 15:50:53 +0000

TrueCrypt or any other volume encryption VE based solutions are often buggy and inferior to full disk encryption. Yes, now TrueCrypt does some version of FDE but DiskCryptor’s fundamental concept is in that direction, and is far more stable. Honestly, I’ve never understood the popularity of TrueCrypt. I’ve installed and used several versions and found it to be amateurish and unstable at best, especially the whole “hide the real partition inside the fake one” etc. Seems like some kid playing spy games instead of a focus on getting the fundamentals correct.

DiskCryptor is on the right track but they need to support a larger character set for passwords (don’t think it supports any of the extended ascii characters) as well as support for usb tokens/smart cards.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:43:48 +0000

Well, people may not want to purchase an entirely new hard drive just so that they can encrypt their content.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:42:37 +0000

Do a Google search for TrueCrypt vs. DiskCryptor. You’ll find that there are plenty of reasons. One in particular that I’ve found is that some people find DiskCryptor to be much more stable (TrueCrypt has been known to cause BSoD’s from time to time).

By: John

John — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:51:04 +0000

I’ve tried the program, and what is different from TC, is that DC can fully encrypt volumes besides the system one. For example, TC can only create a container file on your USB HDD, but DC encrypts it fully.

Authentication options are also more extensive in DC.

Perhaps even more is there, but that is what I noticed immediately.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:32:34 +0000

Have used most opesource one’s and find them lacking good documentation one can forget support its basically Forums.
To add to that knowing shell commands if you really want to troubleshoot.

Have been using [checkpoint.com] for the last 3 years on Enterprise Laptops and its the most stable even of the boot partition.

Yes its expensive and for now don’t see a option for home users to get it.

Hope affordable and good encryption solutions for end users comes up soon.

By: Anon

Anon — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:40:16 +0000

Exactly, if the author thinks Truecrypt is hard to setup, well…..

By: AndyDrum

AndyDrum — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:59:36 +0000

Why not just buy a FDE drive? They are easier to deal with and cannot be cracked without destroying the drive. I use one at work and you have to put in a password before anything is read off the drive.

By: f0dder

f0dder — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:07:51 +0000

To be honest: what’s the point when there’s TrueCrypt?