We’ve talked about TrueCrypt a couple of times in the past (see Setup and Configuration of My USB Drive and Installing TrueCrypt). I thought it would be worth creating a walk-through showing you how to create your own basic TrueCrypt encrypted volume on a USB drive.
To start the process, make sure that TrueCrypt is installed on your computer system. If not, please see Installing TrueCrypt for a tutorial on how to install TrueCrypt. Double click on the TrueCrypt icon to start the TrueCrypt program.
Once TrueCrypt is running, you will see a window similar to the one on the left. Click on the Create Volume button in the middle of the window on the left hand side. This starts the TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard.
In the wizard window, select Create a standard TrueCrypt volume and then click on the Next > button.
The Volume Location window appears next. This lets you indicate where you want this volume to reside. Since we are going to be encrypting an entire USB drive, you want to click on the Select Device… button.
You can now select the device that you want to encrypt. This may be the most confusing part for most people since they are not typically acccustomed to how the drives are referenced. If you look under the Drive: column, you will see the drive letter that you are probably used to seeing. Select the letter of the drive you want to encrypt. Then, select the entry directly above the drive you want to encrypt. This will encrypt the entire drive and not just the partition. In the example that I am using, I want to encrypt the USB drive which is presently on the F: drive. So, I will chose Harddisk 2: to encrypt. Then click on the OK button.
Warning: Be very careful about the drive you select. If you select the wrong one, you could perminantly lose your data!
You should now be back at the Volume Location window and your location should appear. Click the Next > button.
You are now prompted for encryption options. Since we are just looking at creating a very basic volume, we will select AES for the Encryption Algorithm and RIPEMD-160 for the Hash Algorithm (I’ll get into what these are all about in a later article, I promise). Click on the Next > button.
The Volume Size window now appears. Since we are encrypting an entire USB drive, there are no options to select at this point. Click Next > to continue.
You are now asked for a password in order to access the volume. Be certain to select a good password (This sounds like it would make a good article as well). Enter it in both the Password: and the Confirm: boxes and then click Next >.
Warning: Do not forget your password because there is no known way of retreiving the password if it is lost. This means that you will never be able to get the data back.
In the Volume Format window, leave all of the default settings and click the Format button.
You are not presented with a warning window. Click on the OK button to proceed.
TrueCrypt will now start to format the volume. The length of time that the formatting process takes will vary depending on how big the USB drive is and how powerful your computer is. Please be patient while this finishes.
When the formatting is done, you will now have a TrueCrypt encrypted USB drive. Click on the Exit button to finish the wizard and then you can click on the Exit button to close TrueCrypt.
In upcoming articles, I will be talking about how to mount and dismount a TrueCrypt volume along with how to pick some more advanced options with the TrueCrypt system.
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October 21st, 2006 at 7:42 am
Hey
Is it possible to remove the truecrypt volume from the USB??
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:54 am
HELP!
I followed your instructions to the “T” and now I can no longer use my USB drive.
I did EVERYTHING! to your instructions and everyhthing happened as per your description UTNIL the end. Now I cannot see my USB drive in “My Computer” and when I launch TrueCrypt from my computer the USB drive is not in the window (unless I unplug it… weird). I can see it when I right click on “My Computer” and and then “Manage,” then “Storage,” and then on “DiskManagement(Local)” and I can see it in TrueCrypt from the “Select Device” button but I can’t get into it, add anything to it or start any programs. When I plug it into any other computer I’m asked if I want to format the drive. I eventually HAD to format it but still I cannot use it.
I followed your directions exactly and went over and over it several times trying to retrace my mistake but cannot see where I made any!
PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:24 am
Also now I can’t seen any other USB drive that I put in my USB slots!!!!!
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Vrijen,
I am not certain as to what specifically you are asking. If you no longer want your USB drive to be encrypted with TrueCrypt, you can simply reformat it using Windows.
If you want to move a TrueCrypt volume to another device, you cannot do it with this method. You would have to create a file volume with Truecrypt and store it on the USB drive. You could then move the encrypted file to any other drive you wished.
Tim
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:41 pm
tdp,
I’m sorry to hear that your TrueCrypt experience has not gone as you wish. I will try to help you the best I can.
After a USB drive is encrypted with TrueCrypt, the Windows OS does not know what to do with the TrueCrypt file system. This is probably why you were receiving the format requests. Also, because of this, you cannot manage a TrueCrypt volume like you would with a standard FAT32 or NTFS formatted disk for the Disk Management MMC.
To manage the TrueCrypt volume, you need to do this from TrueCrypt itself. All mounting and disk management can be done from this point. I have written Using a TrueCrypt Volume for a detailed walk-through of this process.
As for your USB devices, it almost looks like Windows is no longer polling for USB devices on that port. Check to see if this is happening on other port.
Sorry, but I also need to ask this. Have you rebooted to see if this fixes the USB issue?
I hope this helps with your issues. Please feel free to repost more comments if I can be of further assistance.
Tim
October 29th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Hi, I have the problem that similar to situation of tdp.
After doing the procedures above to create a TrueCrypt Volume, Windows cannot read my USB. It said my USB haven’t been formatted. My situation is better since my USB can be formatted and used again in Windows successfully. Anyhow, I am interested in using TruCrypt to encrypt the data in my USB.
By the way, if a Volume on a USB Drive is created by TrueCrypt in my personal computer, will the USB able to work in other computers?
Although my USB is failed to be encrypt with TrueCrypt, I wanna thanks Tim writing this cool articles for us. The procedures are really detailed. We appreciate that. ^^
October 29th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
One of the issues that you may be running into is that in order for this USB drive to work correctly, you need to use it in a system that has TrueCrypt properly installed, the TrueCrypt driver running, and TrueCrypt itself running in the system tray. This way, it can auto detect the USB drive.
If you want to use this drive which is completely encrypted on another machine, you need to have TrueCrypt properly installed, the TrueCrypt driver running, and TrueCrypt itself running in the system tray in order to use it properly.
If you are concerned about running it on systems that do not have TrueCrypt installed, I would suggest formatting your USB drive under Windows, installing TrueCrypt in Traveler Mode on the USB drive and then create an encrypted TrueCrypt volume in a file on the USB drive. Then, you should be able to open the volume on any system, even if TrueCrypt is not installed on it (as long as you have administrative access to the system).
Tim
January 16th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Hi!
I dont know if it is a good idea format my MP3Player/Pendrive Foston…
I´m afraid about format it and after this I have some problems with the firmware…
Do somebody knows something about this?
Thanks!
Junior
January 16th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I would say that it would probably be a bad idea to turn your entire MP3 player into a TrueCrypt volume. I can almost guarantee the the player would not be able to read the encrypted volume.
Also, there is a chance that the software for the player may be stored on the disk itself and that may be lost.
If you want to store encrypted information on your MP3 player, I would suggest installing TrueCrypt in travel mode on the player and then creating an encrypted volume inside a file that you save on the USB drive. This way, you can still play your MP3’s along with securing your data when you are out and about.
Tim
January 25th, 2007 at 7:22 am
A slightly better way to handle this would be to use TC to create a volume on the USB drive that is ~5MB smaller than the capacity listed, using whatever encryption settings you like.
Once you’ve done that, go to “Tools” and then “Traveller Disk Setup”. Tell it to install to your USB drive, and have it auto-run Truecrypt.
Bingo, same effect on a FAT partition, so Windows will automatically recognize and mount the drive, which triggers the autorun - launching the portable version of Truecrypt and prompting for your pass phrase.
Thus, you can use the drive on any Windows computer without having to install Truecrypt first - you’re always carrying around a copy instead.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Excellent option, ZB. It is, of course, still limited to the needing administrator access on the local computer to load the driver.
But this is a limitation for any computer. Either install the driver in advance as a local admin or be a local admin if running in traveler mode.
Tim
February 4th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Hi,
I’ve installed TrueCrypt on my USB drive as per “Traveller Disk Setup” instructions. I then did the following:
Inserted the USB drive on another (colleagues) PC, it automatically asked me to mount the drive & I put in my password. All as expected. I showed my colleague part of a VERY sensitive spreadsheet. I closed Excel & removed the pendrive.
Later that day my colleague informed me that the entire contents of my USB drive were still on his PC.
I can now see how this happens but to me this is a severe flaw. I could have inadvertantly left very sensitive info on another PC. I’m not an IT beginner, but this one really caught me out. I just assumed that when you had a super secure store on a USB drive, physically removing it would automatically remove any access to the data.
Is there an option I’m missing somewhere or is it just my brain trying to apply common sense where it shouldn’t.
Jim
March 16th, 2007 at 6:11 am
It might be a good idea to backup your flash drive before you try this. But I am still going to try.
I want to use this to backup my external laptop HDD.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:22 am
After formatting the drive I got an error message saying that trucrypt was unable to create the file… Windows can’t read the disk so I am going to format it.
Maybe storing data in password protected RAR files will be easier for most people than to encrypt their drives…
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:35 am
hi TDP, I hope by now you’ve sorted it out, but just in case…
I has the same problem you did - essentially after installing Truecrypt, my USB was n o longer recognized on other PCs, but more importantly, it wasn’t recognized on my own PC (!!!)
I must say was VERY disappointed with the lack of support from truecrypt on this. This is not some minor details, and they could acknowledge this in their FAQs if not warn people upfront about this very time consuming and annoying “side-effect”
This is what I did to resolve it:
Right click on my computer
Manage
Disk Management (under storage)
Format your USB stick (rename it for easier recognition later)
Right click your formatted USB volume
Change drive letter and path
Add
Assign the following drive letter (select a letter)
Voila, after this my USB was recognized again.
Hope this helps,
ddiddo
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Thanks for the nice step-by-step instructions.
I’ve got a error formatting USB (partition exists).
Here are some facts:
- OS - Win2K Pro;
- logged as Admin;
- tried Kingston 2Gb USB,
Simpletech 1Gb USB;
Geedom 0.5Gb USB (all brand new);
- following recommendation on the error message
of the TC doesn’t work - option “Delete Partition”
is greyed-out (tried on Win2k Pro and WinXP Pro).
Trying to find a solution, would appreciate any help.
Thanks, Vic
June 24th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Thank you for all the advice, I finally got my external drive working the way I wanted to. I use it as a usb traveler. The one thing I needed was to go back into the encrypting program and tell it what to do when I plugged it into another computer. Works great now, many thanks.
Claude
August 13th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Mine works on my computer, but when I plug the USB stick into another computer TrueCrypt doesn’t load up or Mount anything, and says this error:
Please copy files ‘truecrypt.sys’ and ‘truecrypt-x64.sys’ to the same directory where the application is located.
Any help?