As technology improves our devices keep getting smaller and smaller, allowing us to take our data with us wherever we go. Desktop sales are falling while laptop and mobile device sales remain strong.

• Encrypting Hard Drive For Os X Mac
• Encrypting Drives In Windows 10
• Best Encrypted External Hard Drives
• Encrypting Hard Drive Windows 10
• Encrypting Hard Drive For Os X 2
• Is My Hard Drive Encrypted

Nov 30, 2018  If you're using FileVault in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade to FileVault 2 by upgrading to OS X Lion or later. After upgrading OS X, open FileVault preferences and follow the onscreen instructions to upgrade FileVault. RAID partitions or non-standard Boot Camp partitions on the startup drive might prevent OS X from installing a local. DiskCryptor also supports encrypting several volumes at once, can pause encryption so you can reboot or remove a hard drive during the process, works with a RAID setup, and can encrypt ISO images to produce encrypted CDs/DVDs.

One of the safest ways to store data is using any of the providers in our online storage comparison, but sometimes you just have to keep files on your local disk as well. While carrying all our data with you is convenient, there is a potential problem that some users never stop to think about — what happens if your laptop or tablet is stolen or lost?

Your data is valuable to you. Whether it’s years of family pictures, your research, or your work files, chances are you don’t want a stranger snooping through it. By encrypting your hard drive — or securing it with a TrueCrypt alternative before sending it off to the cloud — you’re guaranteeing your data’s safety.

Today I’m going to show you how to encrypt a hard drive. It’s easy to do and once you have it set up the process is automatic. You don’t have to know arcane technical details to follow along, but I’ll provide a quick overview of how it works and then show you the best way to encrypt a hard drive — on Windows, Linux or MacOS.

Hard Drive Encryption Methods

Disk encryption works a little differently than email encryption in that you don’t have to encrypt files on an individual basis.

You could choose to encrypt only certain files, if you wanted to, but there is a problem with doing so: as you open files and use software, your computer often writes temporary files to the disk in locations you may not be aware of.

For example, if you are working on a sensitive document that you plan on encrypting when you’ve finished, the software may be copying the data to a temporary file as it automatically saves your work.

Even if you encrypt the file when you are finished and delete the original copy, it’s not truly gone. Think of your hard drive as storing an address that points to your files, rather than the files themselves — when you delete the file, you actually delete the “address” pointing to the file and your computer views that area as free space.

The data doesn’t actually disappear until your computer overwrites it, which occurs at random as you create or download new files. This means that an attacker could use forensic software to locate files that you thought were deleted, which defeats the point of encrypting them in the first place.

That is why full disk encryption is the best way to encrypt a hard drive. When you hibernate or shut your computer down, all of your data is locked away. It appears as random garbage to anyone that attempts to access it. If you want to learn more about this process, Symantec has an excellent white paper that’s a short, concise overview of the process.

A partition is simply a slice of your hard drive reserved for usage. Full disk encryption will create a small partition at the beginning of your drive that allows your computer to begin booting up.

The encryption software will encrypt the hard disk partition containing your operating system and data. When your computer starts only the small, unencrypted boot partition is available. Your data remains safe and inaccessible until you decrypt it.

Best Software to Encrypt a Hard Drive

The best program to encrypt a hard drive will depend on which operating system you are using. Operating system vendors realize that your data is valuable to you and each OS typically includes a utility to encrypt your hard disk during installation.

If you’ve already installed your operating system and find yourself wanting to encrypt a hard drive without formatting, don’t fret — there are ways to encrypt a hard disk drive that don’t require you to format and reinstall your computer.

What You’ll Need

All you need to encrypt your hard drive is the encryption software and, preferably, a flash drive or CD to store a backup key and passphrase, which is what you’ll need to unlock your encrypted disk.

Depending on the software used, you will unlock your hard drive using a password, a keyfile or both.

https://expertsgol.netlify.app/setting-up-macos-sierra-for-ruby.html. Jun 19, 2020  The first thing to note is that macOS Catalina ships with Ruby version 2.6.3 as the default. Moreover, the default directory for installing Gems is not writable without “sudo” access. I'm setting up a Ruby on Rails web development environment on a new machine (macOS Sierra v. I'm following the setup instructions here: Setup Ruby On Rails on macOS 10.12 Sierra. When I check the newly installed rails version, I get the following: $ rails -version Expected string default value for '-rc'; got false (boolean) Rails 4.2.6. May 20, 2017  Ruby version 2.0.0 comes installed on macOS Sierra. However, support for Ruby 2.0.0 ended on February 26, 2016. Also, as you begin to work on more Ruby projects, you’ll need to work with multiple Ruby versions. Luckily, several tools exist to help us install and manage multiple Ruby versions. The one I use and recommend is rbenv. Setting Up A Database. We're going to install sqlite3 from homebrew because we can't use the built-in version with macOS Sierra without running into some troubles. Brew install sqlite3. Rails ships with sqlite3 as the default database. Chances are you won't want.

It’s extremely important that you do not lose your passphrase or key. Ideally, you will keep a written copy of your passphrase stored in a secure location known only to you at least until you’ve memorized it. Keep a copy of your recovery key on a USB drive and store it somewhere safe, as if you lose your passphrase and key there is no way for you to recover your data.

Encrypting a Hard Drive in Windows, Mac or Linux

We’ve covered why you need to encrypt your drive and what you’ll need to do it, now we’ll focus on the process of encryption depending on your operating system.

Encrypt a Hard Drive in Windows 7, 18 and 10

If you’re using Windows, I’ll show you how to encrypt a hard drive with BitLocker, provided by Microsoft. BitLocker is a highly secure tool that encrypts data using the Advanced Encryption Standard to lock your data away.

Step 1: Click “start,” click “control panel,” click “system and security” and then click “BitLocker drive encryption.”

Step 2: Click Turn on BitLocker.

Note: If your computer has TPM (Trusted Platform Module), BitLocker may turn it on and require a reboot. When you turn your computer back on, you’ll see a prompt on how to enable TPM — it varies depending on your hardware manufacturer, but if you need assistance feel free to comment or email me and I’ll walk you through it.

Step 3: You’ll choose to use a PIN, passphrase or a startup key to decrypt your hard drive, depending on which version of Windows or Bitlocker you use, and whether or not you have a computer with TPM.

Choose a pin from 8-20 characters and write it down until you memorize it. If you choose a startup key you can copy it to a flash drive.

Step 4: Save or print a recovery key. I suggest doing both, as losing this means losing your data. You may also choose to save the recovery key to your Microsoft account.

Step 5: You’ll be prompted to restart your computer and BitLocker will begin the encryption process.

Encrypt a Hard Drive in MacOS

Apple has taken a strong pro-privacy stance (well, most of the time) in order to protect their users. Since OS X Yosemite, FileVault has been enabled by default (check out our article on best TrueCrypt alternatives to find out more about FileVault).

This means if you are running Yosemite or later, you may already have full disk encryption enabled. You can check this by going clicking the Apple icon, clicking “system preferences” and then clicking “security & privacy.” The FileVault tab will show whether or not it is enabled.

Step 1: To turn FileVault on and encrypt a hard drive on your Mac, simply click the button labeled “turn On FileVault.” You will have to enter an administrator username and password, and if there are multiple user accounts you’ll have to click the “enable user” button. When FileVault is enabled, no user can automatically log in. The hard drive is only decrypted when a user enters their password to log in.

Step 2: At this point you’ll create a recovery key. On Yosemite and later versions, you can use your iCloud account to unlock your disk and reset your password.

If you’re still running Mavericks or earlier, you can store the recovery key with Apple by providing a security question and three answers.

Note: Write these down. If you lose them Apple will not be able to help you recover your data.

There is also an option to create a local recovery key. Again, write this down and store it in a secure location.

Encrypt a Hard Drive in Linux

There are many different distributions of Linux and encrypting a hard drive in Linux can be accomplished in several different ways.

The easiest method, of course, is to encrypt your hard drive during the installation of your chosen distribution.

Most of the popular Linux distributions provide this option during installation. Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and openSuse are among the distributions that provide an easy-to-use full disk encryption method during installation.

Here’s the bad news: enabling full disk encryption on your Linux system after installation is a complex process that requires several several tricky steps.

First, you must be using Logical Volume Management (LVM) so that you can resize your existing partitions. Then you must have enough free space to create encrypted partitions for your existing data, copy it over and then delete your original unencrypted partitions.

To encrypt an existing Linux installation, you’ll need to be comfortable with the command line, as well as creating, resizing and destroying partitions manually. Your easiest option is to backup your data to an external drive using a tool like DejaDup and then installing a fresh copy of your distro of choice.

Most Linux distributions use a setup called “LVM on LUKS,” which means Logical Volume Management on Linux Unified Key Setup. This is a lengthy topic that I won’t delve into here for brevity’s sake, but interested readers can read more if they’re curious.

In short, during installation, when the installer is at the partitioning stage you can select to encrypt your hard disk. You’ll choose a passphrase, and be given the option to overwrite your existing data. If you have sensitive data, you should let the system overwrite it. Be aware that depending on your disk size this can be a very lengthy process.

As always, write your passphrase down until you’ve memorized it or keep it written down in a safe location. If you lose this passphrase, you lose your data.

Conclusion

A laptop is an easy thing to steal, and with it the valuable data you keep on it. While you can encrypt a file or a folder by itself, the only way to protect all of your data at once is to use full disk encryption.

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Encrypting your hard disk in Windows, Mac or Linux is pretty easy and can be done in just a few minutes. If you want to double up on your security, we also recommend using any of our secure cloud storage providers.

We also have a guide for how to encrypt Android devices.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, and feel free to share this on social media to help your friends, family or coworkers learn to keep their valuable data secure. Thank you for reading.

Summary

This article offers detailed guidance to help you recover data from encrypted (EFS) hard drive partitions in Windows 10/8/7 and Mac OS X. If you are having problems in restoring data from EFS partitions in your Windows hard drive, follow to find solutions here.

'I have a 160GB hard drive partition used as a photo album in my PC to store all fancy photos for my life. I have stored almost about 2 years' photos there and encrypted so to avoid data loss problem. I upgraded my computer from Windows 8 to Windows 10. And here is the problem that I lost the password for the EFS hard drive partition and I'm wondering whether I can still access my photos and restore them from the EFS encrypted hard drive partition? And I want to move those photos to my new external hard drive. So can you help me to get all my photos out from the EFS hard drive partition under Windows 10?'

If you are having a similar problem and cannot access data to EFS partition or hard drives in PC or Mac, don't bother. Here below, you'll find wanted solutions to restore data from encrypted hard drive partition now.

Trying to unlock a hard drive to resolve Windows installation problem? Go to the linked page.

1 - Decrypt EFS (encrypted) hard drive partition

Here are two ways to decrypt the HDD in Windows OS and one way to decrypt Mac OS.

Decrypt Windows hard drive - Option One

If you have a certificate for the encrypted (EFS) hard drive partition, you can access data in the hard drive with ease. Here below are detailed steps about how to decrypt EFS (encrypted) hard drive partition in Windows 10/8/7:

Step 1: Open Run dialogue (Windows + R keys), type certmgr.msc and hit Enter

Step 2: Open Certificate Manager > Click Personal folder in the left pane;

Step 3: Select Action > All Tasks > Import and follow the Certificate Import Wizard

• Follow the onscreen guidance and decrypt the hard drive partition with the certificate, then you'll be able to get all your data stored in the hard drive partition and transfer to your new storage device.

If you don't have any certificate or password for decrypting the EFS (encrypted) hard drive partition in Windows OS, you may follow the other method behind.

Encrypting Hard Drive For Os X Mac

Decrypt Windows hard drive - Option Two

Enter: Diskpart in the search bar > list disk (you should be able to spot the encrypted hard drive by the size, take note of the number listed against it) > select disk x (where x is the number from the previous step) > clean > create partition primary > select partition 1 > active > format fs=ntfs quick /override > exit.

For example:

Decrypt Mac hard drive

Open Terminal and paste: sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/* and hit Return > enter your admin password and press Return > type: sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/* and hit Return > type: killall Finder and hit Return.

When all these steps are done, you'll be able to decrypt the hard drive on your Mac.
If you have forgotten the password, you can follow the next steps to erase and decrypt Mac hard drive:

Encrypting Drives In Windows 10

1. Launch Terminal and enter: diskutil cs and high return.

2. The Terminal will produce a result comprising of codes in a hierarchy. In the code copy the alphanumeric code which is next to Logical Volume Group.

3. Type: diskutil cs delete XXXX____YYYY___ZZZZ___XYZ and hit Enter.

2 - Restore data from decrypted hard drive partition with data recovery software

After decrypting the HDD, you shall be able to open and use previously encrypted hard drive partition saved data by then. If you still cannot access those saved data, relax and let professional data recovery software help.

Professional EFS recovery alternative software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can help you access to all saved data in decrypted hard drive partition which was encrypted previously. It has both a Windows and Mac version. So, download the appropriate version according to your needs.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can access your data in the previously encrypted hard drive partition without any password or certificate in Windows OS. You can free download it and follow below steps to restore your data such as photos back to your new storage device or a safe spot on your PC.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS hard drive recovery software.

Mac os mojave for high sierra. Run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard on your PC and select the drive on your hard disk where you lost or deleted files. Click 'Scan' and let this program scan all lost data and files on the selected hard drive.

Step 2. Check and preview all lost hard drive data.

Best Encrypted External Hard Drives

Find lost hard drive data from 'Deleted Files', 'Lost Files' or use 'Filter' to quickly navigate the lost data. Check and double-click to preview these found files.

Step 3. Restore lost hard drive data to a safe location.

Encrypting Hard Drive Windows 10

After the preview, select wanted files that you lost on the drive and click 'Recover' to save them. Browse to choose a safe location on your PC or other external storage devices to store these restored hard drive data.

Encrypting Hard Drive For Os X 2

After restoring data from the encrypted hard drive partition, you can reformat it into NTFS and make it reusable and readable again.

Is My Hard Drive Encrypted