I'm writing this article on a netbook ASUS 1000HE. Actually I'm surfing a lot from the sofa and enjoy this tiny computer a lot. As it accompanies me on all trips whilst containing sensitive information like e-mails and certain account credentials, the first thing I did with it was, securing its hard disk.
To protect your data on a netbook, like for any other notebook, you have to encrypt the hard disk. There might be a lot of commercial packages for encrypting a hard disk, but today I tell you how to do it for free. You'll need 3 free tools to achieve perfect proctection of your sensitive data stored on a laptop or netbook hard disk.
This article describes what is necessary for perfectly encrypting the hard disk, making it unreadable for anybody not knowing the password. When following the described procedure, you'll have to enter your password each time the computer starts, directly after BIOS. Even the Windows OS doesn't require to be password-protected nor does it know about the encryption! For windows, everything seems to be unencrypted as usual. But as soon as Windows is shut down, all that can be found on the hard disk is a meaningless noise of data.
Please note: The tools and procedure described here requires good knowledge of using computer software. You should be aware that any blindfold interruption of the tools, as well as anything else described here, could lead to data loss. I therefore recommend this procedure for newly set up systems not containing any sensitive or precious data.
The hard disk of an Eee PC contains two partitions. One to hold the Windows operating system, one to hold the recovery partition required in case the OS is broken some day and has to be restored.
TrueCrypt is a very mature and reliable encryption software that's absolutely free. You may download TrueCrypt from www.truecrypt.org.
Partition Master is a tool free for personal use. It allows for moving hard disk partitions and resizing them. Download it from www.partition-tool.com.
Daemon-Tools provides virtual CD and DVD services, so you can mount an ISO image. Download it from www.daemon-tools.cc.
First, you have to install all the above tools one by one. After doing so, restart your netbook to be sure they are all installed and your computer is still able to boot. Don't start to use any of the tools before all of them have been installed successfully. That's because you'll simply need all of them to succeed. If one fails installation, you'll have to find another similar software. If the computer fails to boot, you'll still be able to recover the OS.
The special about netbooks currently arround is, they are without CD/DVD drive. Unfortunately, when applying a TrueCrypt encryption to the system drive, an optical drive like DVD/CD is required. I use Daemon Tools to bypass the True Crypt checks.
The steps are:
1. Move the Windows partition to make place for the TrueCrypt boot loader.
2. Create the TrueCrypt Rescue Disk ISO image.
3. Use TrueCrypt to create a hidden operating system.
4. As soon as TrueCrypt asks for it, mount the TrueCrypt Rescue Disk ISO image.
5. Done, system is secure now.
I will for now not provide any further information, for one simple reason:
You have all the information you need to secure a non-CD-capable netbook with TrueCrypt. The steps to be fulfilled are briefly explained and you now should know what to do. If you don't know, please read the fucking manuals of the software vendors stated above. If you still don't know what to do, just don't do it. You would kill your netbook or your computer and most likely lose some data.
If you know what to do, congratulations! Drop a comment to tell me about your experience and ideas.
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