question about HD encryption...

is it possible to encrypt an external HD, then move the HD to another machine, and access the data?...

thanks

the reason I ask the question in the previous post is b/c I have a ubuntu machine, that I'm about to upgrade from scratch, and I want to place my PGP private key in an encrypted folder, on an external HD....for later retrieval from the newly install os

thanks

How about just putting it into a password protected zip or rar? AFAIK there is no way to get past the password besides brute forcing, which takes a long time depending on the password used.

Putting a password on the private key should suffice..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SirDice

Putting a password on the private key should suffice..

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Is there any way to do a brute force attack on the password in the private key?

thanks

To answer your original question, there are a number of programs that let you encrypt either the contents of a file, individual files, or entire drives. You just need to make sure that the encryption program can run on the operating systems of each computer you connect the removable drive to. PGP is well regarded option and, depending on your version and licensing, may include the option create an encrypted volume from a file. Just make sure it's secured with a password, not the key you want to encrypt in the first place...

There are a slew other options as well. One of my personal favorites is TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) which is free, open source, runs on most operating systems. I use it to encrypt my USB thumb drive as well as things like financial documents on my PC.

Hope this helps.

J.

www.cert-tech.com

truekrypt was what I was hoping doing it with... my worry is that because the encryption algorithm was generated on one pc, even if you know the password... the second pc wouldn't let you get in b/c it doesn't make sence of the encryption done by the first, may be it doesn't work like this and I have it all wrong

thanks

Keep in mind that with reputable encrypt standards, the encryption algorithms like AES or 3DES are the well know and vetted by the security community long before they became standards. It's your key or password that are secret.

The only thing to watch out for is that different implementations of the same standards may not be compatible, so in general it's best to use the same program to decrypt it that created it.