I wanted to encrypt my external drive with password, which is compatible in both

Question

I wanted to encrypt my external drive with password, which is compatible in both Linux and Windows.

Truecrypt is an option. But the development of it is stopped few months back.

I came across crpytsetup in Ubuntu, which is said to work well in Windows with FreeOTFE.

I tried encrypting using cryptsetup in Ubuntu, when I put the same drive in Windows, It gave a warning message for format disk. When i gave format, it got formatted and started working well without any password. It is an unsafe option :(

Is there any other option which is compatible well with Windows and Linux ensuring the safety of the data? Okay if paid solution.

Thank you

Explanation / Answer

I don't think you understood what Windows did when it formatted the disk. When you plugged in the external drive, Windows couldn't read the filesystem (because it's encrypted) it therefore assumed the drive had no filesystem and offered to format the drive. You selected yes. Windows then deleted everything on the drive and overwrote it with a clean NTFS filesystem, with no data. This isn't insecure, because there's no data exposed to the Windows user. None of the encrypted data was ever available to any of the Windows users or processes.

I haven't explored FreeOTFE, but I assume if you ignore the Windows format option and instead install and use FreeOTFE you won't have a problem. Once the disk is decrypted, Windows will be able to read the filesystem and will be able to see data on the drive.

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