TrueCrypt may come as an ideal solution for those wishing to secure any personal data from their PC. Installing it only takes a few minutes and might help you avoid some most unpleasant situation like financial fraud or other. What TrueCrypt does is creating a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounting it as a real disk. The encrypted file system works with Linux and Windows and offers the advantage of both portability and file recovery if the system crashes.
Using the basic Easy Crypt setup, gets you to save your locked files as a hidden file in your user directory, located at /home/username/.easycrypt-crypt. However, if you use the 'expert' mode you can select any location to use a crypt, including an usb key.
Using Easy Crypt may come in very handy due to its simplicity in making a backup copy on a CD-RW or DVD-RW periodically. All you have to do is drag and drop the file.
This should only take even less than 5 minutes. These are the steps for the current version (0.2.1.16):
1) Launch Synaptic and go into the repository below:
Click reload and find ‘truecrypt’; select both truecrypt and easycrypt packages to be installed, then apply, and quit Synaptic.
2) After that, search for Easy Crypt in your Applications –> Accessories menu, then run it. Your system tray will display the icon; right click to surface the menu. A good idea would be to set the preferences to ‘auto start’ on login so it will always be kept in the system tray.
3) If you are not familiar with it (or TrueCrypt), you’ll have to make a new crypt. Click ‘recreate crypt’, and it will show with a warning about “destroy the contents–are you sure?” As this is your first crypt, it doesn’t matter, so you can go ahead and click yes.
4) Make sure you choose an inspired (preferably random) password or passphrase and that you won’t forget it.
5) Opt for your file system size. If you’re going to make frequent backing up on CD-RW you should go with 700MB. For a DVD (-R / +R / +RW / -RW) sized file, use 4480MB.
The set up is now over and using your encrypted file system should meet no problem. With a simple mouse click on the Easy Crypt logo, you get the password entry window to come up. You type in your pass and the file system becomes visible as a drive mounted on the desktop. You might consider making a ‘Places bookmark’ in your nautilus side pane for convenience.
All you have to do now is to copy those important files over to your encrypted file system but always remember to close crypt when finished and burn your backup after you are done copying a lot of new files over to it.
