Sony Vaio FW - Truecrypt encryption

Hi guys,
I was reading this thread about protecting your hard drive through encryption. A lot of you seem pretty knowledgeable about Truecrypt.

Would it be possible to have a setup like this:

• Turn on computer
• Enter password for Truecrypt during boot process
• If password is correct, go to regular Windows installation. If password is wrong, then load a "decoy" Windows installation.

I have Windows 7 x64 Professional and a Sony Vaio FW.

 

I think something like that is possible: TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source Disk Encryption Software - Documentation - Plausible Deniability

 

Thanks Enny02, but from it seems like I can only have a "correct" password and a "decoy" password. In other words, I can't have any wrong password boot the decoy OS. Or am I missing something from the article?



Basically, I want to encrypt my system, but I also want to use prey. However, Prey won't get triggered if the thief can't access your encrypted system (but at least you don't lose your data).

I didn't want to hijack the other thread, but this post seems to be what I need. I don't understand how to encrypt it without encrypting the entire drive though:

 

The chance is still very slim that you'll get your laptop back, even if you leave your laptop open for access. You still have to count on the stupidity of the thief. Even with the IP of the laptop when the thief checked in there is still no guarantee that the laptop will be recovered.
I set on my laptop a BIOS and power on password.

 

Doesn't seem like there's a way then

And while it's probably true that the chances of getting a stolen laptop back are slim, I'd still like to have that extra bit of assurance/insurance. How cool would it be to be able to see what your thief looks like (Prey has a webcam feature).

I guess I'll just go for the plain-old whole disk encryption then.

Quick question, if your laptop battery dies while you're using whole disk encryption, what happens? Or if you have to force your laptop to turn off (Windows freezes for example).

 

Well it is only my opinion about the chances and what I did, that does not mean I'm right. If you still want to have the extra chance ....

Keep in mind that whole disk encryption affects the performance of the disk drive, but you maybe won't notice it (not sure how the performance hit is on Toshiba or Samsung SSD's).

If your battery runs out or if you hard shutdown your computer during the encryption is running all your data on the drive will be lost/inaccessible.

 

That last point is pretty frightening and will outweigh any benefits that encryption has for me. If there's a chance that I can lose everything, then whole disk encryption isn't for me.
In fact, just yesterday, my computer locked up and I had to do a hard shutdown. I had a truecrypt volume open when it froze, and when I rebooted, the truecrypt volume was fine after mounting it. Whole disk encryption is different than a single volume I assume.

 

The volume was already encrypted right? That is why nothing happened to it. Only the time when configure the encryption and it encrypts the disk/volume the first time is critical. After that you can hard shutdown whenever you want.

 

Yeah it was already encrypted and in use. That's actually what I meant for the whole disk encryption too. Sorry I wasn't clear.

In that case, I'll probably reconsider encryption. So just to clarify, losing power while the encrypted system is in use won't harm the computer? I'll be able to reboot and enter my password and everything will be fine?

One last question, how easy is it to bypass a bios password? Encryption might be overkill for me. Can you simply take out the hard drive and use it on another computer/usb hard drive enclosure?

Thanks for all your help!

 

Okay.
Yes. Yes. I don't know how easy it is for someone to hack/bypass a BIOS password.
If you encrypt the disk drive or partition you cannot bypass the encryption. Also you cannot clone the disk/partition or use any Image/Backup tool while the disk/partition is shown as encrypted/unknown (when you boot from recovery media and you haven't loaded the encryption software and entered the password).