TrueCrypt is one of those applications that no one has heard about, but everyone needs. If you have sensitive documents that you keep on your computer, like tax returns, confidential client data or a file with all of your passwords in it, you need TrueCrypt to protect that data in case of theft.

How It Works

TrueCrypt is a way to create a strongly encrypted virtual file system. With TrueCrypt, you create a new TrueCrypt volume, which is just a file that you save on your computer. You could think of it as kind of like a zip file; it's a file that holds other files. You then use TrueCrypt to mount the TrueCrypt volume. The volume displays as a regular hard drive to your computer. On Windows, it'll just be another G: or H: drive and under the Mac, it'll show up as a hard drive, just like a USB key would. You can then copy files to it, edit files on it, or delete files from it. When you unmount the drive through TrueCrypt, everything gets encrypted and stored in your TrueCrypt file. And TrueCrypt is protected by strong encryption, so if someone gets their hands on your TrueCrypt file, they won't be able to do anything with it without the password.

Cost

The best part is that it's all free. TrueCrypt is an open source project that is constantly being upgraded and made stronger. They are now at version 6.1 and it has gotten reviewed by security experts every step during it's creation. There's also a full list of precautions you can take to protect yourself better.

Uses

TrueCrypt is one of those applications that I think everyone could be using to increase the security of their data. As I said above, I use it to store tax returns, my passwords file and quite a few other financial documents that I don't want getting out if my computer is stolen. I also use it as a way to keep documents on Dropbox that I want encrypted. It's so easy to create a volume and store things in it that, even if what I'm storing isn't super secret information, I can still protect it with a minimum of effort.

There are actually a few other ways to use TrueCrypt, including full disk encryption and USB key encryption. I won't go into those here, but you can read about them on the TrueCrypt website if you're interested.

Installation

It's very easy to install, but the steps to create a volume are a little involved. Download TrueCrypt and then have a look at this document to see how to create a volume with it. I would recommend using AES-256 encryption, the same level of encryption used for Top Secret US documents.

If you have sensitive documents on your computer or, worse, your easy-to-steal laptop, put them in a TrueCrypt volume today. You really don't want that stuff getting out.

Just remember the password.

Now that I'm doing a little more business stuff/personal projects, I've been wanting to do a little planning about what I'm trying to get at and what I really want to do. There was an event at the local Coworking Office Space about business planning that I wanted to attend but wasn't able to make it. It didn't help that it was at 1:30 on a Wednesday afternoon.

Luckily Kelly Brown was nice enough to record his presentation and put it online. It's a nice bit of editing that shows the slides (some are hard to read) and I think I'll give his approach a try. He gets most of his information from a book called Getting The Right Things Done. It seems to not currently be available at Amazon, but the presentation and the lean.org website seems to have enough information to get me started.

Extra special thanks to Kelly for putting this online!

Here in the US, it's Thanksgiving Day. I hope everyone is able to spend time with your families and try to remember all of the reasons in your life to give thanks this holiday.

Also remember to backup those memories your making this holiday season. One day you may "give thanks" you did!

One of the best local backup devices today is the Drobo. The Drobo is a fast, expandable external hard drive. What makes it unique isn't that it's an external hard drive enclosure, but how it stores the data on the drives.

Redundant Redundancy

A Drobo has four hard drive bays that fit any size SATA drive you can buy. You'll need at least two drives for the Drobo to do it's magic.

No matter how many drives you have in the Drobo, the Drobo will show up on your Desktop as one external drive. Every file you put on the Drobo will actually get written to at least two of the drives. This protects your data from hard drive failure. If one of the drives dies, all hard drives will die eventually, your data is still safe on the other drives. Once you replace the faulty drive with a new one, the data will be recreated and will once again be protected.

You can actually mix and match drives in the Drobo, adding different size drives to different bays. The nice thing about that is, as drives get cheaper or if you see one on sale, you can just buy it and plug it into the Drobo without worrying about whether it will work with the other drives. You can see how different drives react to each other with the Drobolator.

If you ever run out of room, all you'll need to do it just buy another drive and plug it into the Drobo. The Drobo will automatically recognize that a new drive has been added and add it automatically into the system.

If a drive dies, the Drobo will alert you to the fact with flashing red lights. Just pop out the bad drive, pop in a new one and you're ready to go.

RAID!

This will sound familiar to any techie since the Drobo is basically just a RAID device. RAID has been around for years and is used by web servers and enterprise data centers to redundantly keep data on more than one drive. The big difference between the Drobo and a regular RAID system is maintenance. RAID systems can be a nightmare to set up and keep running. Also, most RAID systems require that you have all the same size drive installed, making it a pain if you ever want to upgrade to larger drives. I like to call the Drobo a consumer RAID device, since it handles all of the complicated RAID stuff behind the scenes and displays a simple interface for the user. If you know how to use a regular external drive, you know how to use a Drobo.

Problems

There have been many bad reviews on Amazon over the Drobo. The main complaint seems to be support but there is also talk of all four of the hard drives dying at the same time. This could be due to using all the same type of hard drive (namely, low quality drives) or running the Drobo for very long periods of time, which effectively cooked the hard drives. Either way, it is something to be aware of. I use my Drobo mainly for backups and rarely work straight off of it and I can say that I have had no problem with it at all.

I was also recently asked what I would do if the Drobo itself failed but the hard drives were fine. The only thing you can do in this situation is get a new Drobo since it what it writes to the disks is actually gibberish that only it understands. Some people are uncomfortable with that and if you're one of those people, you shouldn't get a Drobo. I'm okay with this since I see $350 a small price to pay to get my data back. It's much more troubling to me to have a hard drive crash and have everything gone than to have my Drobo crash and I just need to buy a new one to get everything back.

Also, the Drobo is pricey. I bought mine for $750, but you can get a full Drobo system for only $569. That still might be too much for some, but it really is the safest way to keep a local backup and, since it's expandable with more and larger drives, should last for many years to come.

Backup is a little like Taekwondo; it's hard to know whether you're really good at [it] until you're in the midst of getting your ass kicked.

-- Twitter Post by Merlin Mann

I realized today that, although I have a solid backup plan, I don't really have a solid recovery plan. I have all my files in a remote and local backup, but how do I get back at them with my computer hosed?

I'm trying to get everything in order with a solid recovery plan. That means:

1. I have to have a copy of my operating system ready to go. I use Ubuntu Desktop LTS, so I'm burning the disk for that now to have it available.
2. I'll need access to the applications I have installed. I don't backup my applications, just my preferences for them. I'll need to have a list of all the applications I currently have installed to install them again once the OS is in.
3. I need my decryption keys for JungleDisk easily available. I think I have them in my lockbox, but I'm scared enough about it that I'll need to check that.
4. I need to prove to myself that I'm really ready.

Getting My Ass Kicked

To cover the last point, I will be putting myself to the test and "losing all my data". I have a spare laptop hard drive sitting around and some day soon, I'm going to swap the hard drives in my laptop. This spare hard drive is empty. I'll be starting from scratch and my goal will be to get back up and running in as little time as possible with no data loss.

This is quite scary to me, but if I'm going to do this blog, I better be able to deliver solutions that actually work. I hope to live blog the experience in some way and perhaps twitter it all as well. Details on that will be coming soon. My plan is to do this on December 13th beginning at 9:00 AM EST. Afterwards, I'll have a postmortem entry with any lessons I learned in the process. I'll also have a post on what my set up is and my plan for recovery.

Wish me luck!