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I want to encrypt a portion on my hard drive on which i want to run my portable apps. My question is, is the encrypting of a partition slowing down the application that resides on it?
Also, if i want later on to change the size of the partition do i have to decrypt it?

Peter202 wrote:is the encrypting of a partition slowing down the application that resides on it?

Just barely. Make sure you use the default AES and not Serpent if you're really worried about speed. You shouldn't notice any difference on machines made after like 2002.

Peter202 wrote:Also, if i want later on to change the size of the partition do i have to decrypt it?

Yep.

The nature of encryption means two overhead issues: size and speed. For size, files that are encrypted generally take up a little more space (somewhere between 2 and 5%). For speed, the process takes a little longer than just reading the file off the drive. The speed issue is mitigated by modern processors, almost all of which have AES acceleration built right in. The space issue can be mitigated by enabling compression, which has a corresponding speed hit.

Peter202 wrote:I want to encrypt a portion on my hard drive on which i want to run my portable apps. My question is, is the encrypting of a partition slowing down the application that resides on it?

TrueCrypt User Guide wrote:Can data be read from and written to an encrypted volume/drive as fast as if the drive was
not encrypted?
Yes, since TrueCrypt uses pipelining and parallelization. For more information, please see the
chapters Pipelining and Parallelization.

Peter202 wrote:Also, if i want later on to change the size of the partition do i have to decrypt it?

TrueCrypt User Guide wrote:Encrypted partitions cannot be resized except partitions on an entirely encrypted system drive that are resized while the encrypted operating system is running.

What is the better thing to do: Create a file container ( virtual disk) or create additional partition on my hard disk and encrypt the partition?

I prefer a file container because I can move it around / take with me on a flash drive and because I don't need to encrypt my whole system or any partition.

From what i am reading the problem with file containers is that their size can't be changed and choosing dynamic size for the virtual volume is not recommended. And if i have encrypted partition and i want to increase its size i can decrypt it and increase the size. I want to protect my data locally and adding new data when i need to, so i guess it's better to go with partition encryption.

First, I'd like to point out that in using TrueCrypt I'm making an assumption that you're interested in better than average security. If you're just trying to keep thieves out and have "Ultimate/Enterprise" Windows, just use BitLocker. It's more than enough.

joby_toss wrote:I prefer a file container because I can move it around / take with me

I'm with Joby. In addition to it's portability, it's also easier to backup, and good security includes redundancy.

Peter202 wrote:From what i am reading the problem with file containers is that their size can't be changed and choosing dynamic size for the virtual volume is not recommended. And if i have encrypted partition and i want to increase its size i can decrypt it and increase the size. I want to protect my data locally and adding new data when i need to, so i guess it's better to go with partition encryption.

You can just move it from one encrypted container to another, larger encrypted container. You don't need to decrypt anything.

Also, partitions in my experience are really annoying. Technically (for magnetic drives) they can increase the life of your drive by reducing the seek time for files in the same area but if you're using a flash-based drive (SSD) you should avoid putting decrypted data on a flash media drive. That data is much more difficult to reliably wipe than on a magnetic device.

Thanks, i will keep that in mind.

Does anyone know if TrueCrypt has command lime parameters that can list the hard disk partitions?

Don't think so. It uses the first available drive letter for mounting, or the specified one if the parameter /l is used (and if that's free).

http://andryou.com/truecrypt/docs/comma ... -usage.php

Do you know a CMD command that can list the partitions on the hard disk in this way:

\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition3

With their full paths.

Not exactly like that, no.

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips ... -help-use/