Encrypt & Erase Could this be the solution?

euroboy

New Member
Once again I have a question for the regulars - sorry!
I have read a few posts about encryption and in particular Drive Encryption. My question is "is it possible to encrypt a file and or drive - then if you erased your C drive would this then make it impossible for recovery software to recover files etc etc...?
 
I assume you mean keep your files encrypted and then erase??

This could make matters worse e.g

File plain.txt -> encrypted to enc.txt then plain.txt still exists on the drive and could be undeleted. you would have to erase plain.txt Therefore erasing enc.txt would be no more secure than just erasing the original plaintext.

Or have I misread??

Garrett
 
Euroboy,

If you choose to use an on-the-fly encryption program like Drivecrypt (or Scramdisk), all your sensitive data would be kept in a special encrypted file on your hard drive that you create. When you create this file you choose how large you want it to be based on how much data you plan to store in it. This file is password protected. To use the file, you must "mount" it. All this means is that you tell the program what your passphrase is and the FILE then shows up in Windows Explorer as a new logical drive (ie: if you had only a C: drive, after mounting the encrypted file you would now have what would APPEAR to be a new drive; possibly called D:.) You can then store sensitive data in D: EXACTLY as you would on C:. You can even run programs inside D:.

When you are done working with your data, you "dismount" the D: logical drive and your sensitive data is securely encrypted inside
the single file on your C: drive that became D: when you mounted it. If you decide you no longer want the sensitive data that is in this file, you could simply delete it to the recycle bin using Windows since the remnants of it are of no use to anyone unless they have the passphrase. To be truly secure, however, I would choose to ERASE the file using Eraser. Also, you would want to use Eraser periodically to erase all unused disk space and any other files that are of concern inside Windows or your internet browser.

Hope that makes sense. If you need more info, drop me an email.

Regards,

Scott Smith
 
To Admin & Scott.........Thanks for the reply.

Sorry about the grammar too![:I]

The reply that Scott gave is the one I was seeking and your explanation was spot on[8] [obviously you are more adept at grammar than myself lol.]. Once again thanks[:D]

Kind Regards

euroboy
 
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