External drive supporting encryption without software

[bendoz]

I was wondering if anyone out there has any recommendations for external hard disks which support encryption without requiring software installation. There are plenty of brands available that offer encryption, but I’d really prefer not to have to install any utilities on my machine.

Seagate used to have this BlackArmor portable line that ran software directly off the drive to setup encryption, unlock the drive when plugged in, etc. There was no need to install any software on your machine. It appears that the BlackArmor line has been rebranded as NAS systems so this is no longer an option.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[bulanula]

What you are looking for is called AES hardware encryption. EG like this http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=9896 !

 

[corkyg]

Here are some domestic examples:

http://www.techfresh.net/buffalo-1tb-portable-hdd-with-aes-encryption/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/10/seagate-announces-larger-faster-aes-packing-momentus-hard-drive/

http://www.google.com/search?source...rlz=1T4GGLG_enUS316US316&q=AES+Encrypted+HDDs

 

[Voo]

You could just as easily partition the drive, install TrueCrypt on it and configure autorun correctly. Easy, simple, works for every drive you want.

 

[Mark R]

You could just as easily partition the drive, install TrueCrypt on it and configure autorun correctly. Easy, simple, works for every drive you want.

However, truecrypt requires installation or administrator rights. This means, you can't use a truecrypt encrypted drive, unless you can install the software (e.g. on a work PC).

Truecrypt encrypted drives are extemely fragile in case of unclean shutdown, or unsafe drive removal. I've experimented a lot with truecrypt. I've tested unclean shutdowns (e.g. PC crash, power failure, reset button pressed) and unclean removal - in 100% of my tests, all data on the drive was unrecoverable.

 

[Voo]

However, truecrypt requires installation or administrator rights. This means, you can't use a truecrypt encrypted drive, unless you can install the software (e.g. on a work PC).

What, really? Well if I think about it, I only use truecrypt where it's either already installed or I do have su rights (in which way it works perfectly fine from the USB stick itself), so that could actually totally be possible - interesting how you can use a software for years without noticing such things xX
But thinking about it, it makes totally sense - truecrypt does need to load a driver which obviously can only be done with admin rights..


About unclean shutdowns - sure an encrypted drive is obviously much more fragile (and don't even start about recovering data), but I'd think if you made sure that no data was buffered by the OS (both windows and linux do have that option iirc) that should make this safer. At least that way you have to yank it right while it's writing data to corrupt it - and that problem could only be solved by using an advanced FS (and since most USB practically need to use FAT for compatibility reasons we're doomed there )

 

[Mark R]

About unclean shutdowns - sure an encrypted drive is obviously much more fragile (and don't even start about recovering data), but I'd think if you made sure that no data was buffered by the OS (both windows and linux do have that option iirc) that should make this safer. At least that way you have to yank it right while it's writing data to corrupt it - and that problem could only be solved by using an advanced FS (and since most USB practically need to use FAT for compatibility reasons we're doomed there )

That's what I thought, and is why I tested it very thoroughly.

Even if the drive had been idle for a considerable period of time, I had 100% corruption every unclean shutdown.