The Crypt-ic way

[053] ... [Technology]

My first brush with file encryption was through FreeOTFE (On The Fly Encryption) that enables to create containers or volumes of desired size, and once set with a password, formatted and mounted like a CD or DVD, lets you copy files onto it or work on files within like the normal ones on a physical drive, till you unmount like ejecting the CD or an USB drive. I liked the simplicity of the program that also runs in a portable mode. But that was during WinXP, and also worked on the next. Since the project doesn't seem to be developed anymore, I had problems opening the old volumes on the current OS, and realized on it to be so on 64bit as faced by others. Anyway, the problem was solved by running the old Windows version virtually to copy the contents.

I still have those volumes, and after a long time while in a mood to try the old program again, faced the same, and eventually looked up if a work around exists. LibreCrypt (formerly DoxBox) that seems to be the further development of FreeOTFE was a surprise find. It needed to enable "Test mode" after install to reboot and load the drivers, and once done, since being backward compatible, could open my volumes that were created long ago through the other program. I liked that it comes with the Explorer separately like its predecessor to let you browse through to copy files when you don't need to mount them to work on, encrypt a partition or the whole disk, Linux volumes etc., for those interested.

Such utilities come in handy when you wish to safeguard your data, and you can carry it with the Explorer on a removable drive to access from a different device. No doubt other similar and may be more widely used exist, but I was glad to continue with the old in a newer form and added features...