Each person has their own secrets. And the more computers get into people's lives, the more secrets they trust to keep the machine. But keeping private information on a personal computer is not at all secure. Even if user accounts are password protected, even if a password is set in the BIOS, anyone with physical access to the computer can disconnect the hard drive and copy information from it. And when people realize this frightening fact, they involuntarily think about how to encode the disk and thereby reliably protect their data. Fortunately, there are now reliable free programs that provide the functionality you need.
Necessary
Free TrueCrypt encryption software available for download at truecrypt.org
Instructions
Step 1
Copy the entire contents of the encrypted disk to some directory on another disk. Use the file manager or the copying capabilities of the operating system.
Step 2
Begin the process of creating a new encrypted volume. Start TrueCrypt. Select "Volumes" and "Create New Volume…" from the menu. The TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard will open. On the first page of the wizard, select "Encrypt a non-system partition / drive" and click "Next". On the next page select "Standard TrueCrypt volume", click the "Next" button. On the third page, click the "Select Device" button. In the "Select a Partition or Device" dialog box that appears, select the disk to be encrypted, click "OK". Click "Next". The next page of the wizard will open. Select "Create encrypted volume and format it", click "Next". Next, specify the algorithms encryption and hashing in the drop-down lists of the current page, click the "Next" button. Click the Next button again. In the "Password" field, enter the password to access the disk, in the "Confirm" field, confirm the entered password. Click "Next".
Step 3
Format the disk. Move the mouse cursor randomly for some time within the current page of the Create Encrypted Volume Wizard. This is necessary to generate random numbers for encryption algorithms. In the drop-down lists, select the file system and cluster size of the volume. Click the "Format" button. In the warning dialog that appears, click the "Yes" button.
Step 4
Wait for the end of the formatting process. This can take a long time if the disk partition to be formatted is large enough. In the message dialogs that appear after formatting, click the "OK" buttons. Click the "Exit" button.
Step 5
Mount the new encrypted volume. In the main window of the program, click the "Select Device …" button. In the dialog that appears, select the encrypted volume, click the "OK" button. Select any drive letter from the list at the top of the application window. Click the Mount button at the bottom of the TrueCrypt window. A dialog for entering the password for the disk will appear. Enter password. A new drive appears in the list of drives on your computer, indicated by the previously selected drive letter.
Step 6
Copy the files saved in the first step to the encrypted volume. Use the file manager program or the functions of the operating system.
