TrueCrypt

I was looking for a way to encrypt files, and I settled on TrueCrypt. It's open-source and secure.

Compared to SanDisk's SecureAccess

SecureAccess is pretty good, but has these problems:

• Cannot organise files in directories
• To open a file, it first copies the file into a temporary location, which doesn't seem secure

I've only used TrueCrypt's file container mode (create a file, which can be mounted as a drive) so far. Likes:

• Easy to use
• Fast and transparent (works just like any other drive, e.g. USB mass storage, this means you can use it with other software, e.g. backup)
• Only stores decrypted files in RAM
• Mount as read-only - this is great for backups, which you want to write to only once, then only read after that. This way, I don't have to worry about corruption, viruses, accidentally dragging folders etc. I think I might use some TrueCrypt containers just for this function. (Rant: it's ridiculously difficult to make things read-only in Windows. Setting them read-only still lets them be deleted. You can set folder permissions, if you can find the right settings.)

Some problems:

• Size of container can't be changed after creation - you have to plan ahead

I wonder: are the files resistant to corruption? I know zip files get corrupted easily, which may make the whole file unreadable, so they're very risky. TrueCrypt seems to say any corruption will be localised to individual files in the container, so the other files will still be accessible. Header corruption will make the whole file inaccessible, but headers can be backed up.