Keep your files safe – TrueCrypt
This is a problem that all computer users face – How do you keep your file from peeking eyes? This problem is worse on a laptop where the chances of theft or lose are much greater than a desktop machine. Ask yourselves – If you lost your laptop – How important was the data on that laptop – Perhaps you had Credit Card information? Confidential client documents? Maybe secret computer code? This stuff needs to be safe.
So how do you do that? One word – Encryption
One way to go about keeping all eyes off your data is to use an encrypted volume. This is a virtual disk that is encrypted. Any file that is stored in this partition is encrypted on the fly.
There is a neat open source utility called TrueCrypt that can create and manage encrypted volumes. You can create a volume as a file on your disk or create an Encrypted partition on the disk itself.
It supports AES, Blowfish, TripleDes and lots of other encryption schemes. I use an encrypted volume to store all my sensitive work related stuff. If my laptop falls into the wrong hands they may have the hardware but the information is encrypted.
Please note – That encryption can be broken – BUT – it would take a tremendous amount of time and resources.
You can download TrueCrypt at: