i know next to nothing about encryption.
i have a laptop and an external hdd that im afraid i could lose.
is there a way to encrypt said external hdd (and ONLY the hdd) without formatting it?
#secondary drive encryption
jovial zinc
or without reinstalling mint or whatnot
outer wharf
i know next to nothing about encryption.
i have a laptop and an external hdd tha...
I believe the simplest way would be to copy the data onto another device, create a LUKS encryption and then copy the data back. there is theoretically cryptsetup-reecrypt but it will probably lead to data loss
jovial zinc
how to create such luks encryption on a drive?
data loss
i see, i guess its unadvisable in general to encrypt an existing filesystem?
outer wharf
>data loss
i see, i guess its unadvisable in general to encrypt an existing file...
yes
outer wharf
how to create such luks encryption on a drive?
you can look for instructions online, it's like 3 commands
btw, it may be possible with some external tools like veracrypt, but I never used them and don't know if it's possible.
you can look online for that too
jovial zinc
luks = dm-crypt right?
jovial zinc
i see
unkempt knot
there is no way to do this in place
It is simply impossible to have the data in clear text and then not it has to be fully overwritten and there is no good reasonable way to do this in place
does the data need to be readable on only Linux or on different computers?
Veracrypt is a reasonable suggestion as it provides a handy gui to create encrpyted containers
Think of veracrypts encryption as a box you can put any sort of filesystem in
ext4 is the solid standard but is only supported out of the box on Linux
ntfs has OK support on Linux and good support on Windows and is the preferred choice if you want to use the drive on Linux and Windows
be aware that prepping the drive with veracrypt will delete all the data on it make sure you copy everything you need before you create the container
thick sage
i see
you can also use a file shredder to delete files/empty space (such as bleachbit. with the proper settings set)
eg: after container is made, and it should appear as a file. U can run bleachbit (the system app, as root) to clean empty space/folder(s)
*make sure to have a backup somewhere before attempting this.