Create hidden, encrypted partition on USB drive: Benefits, challenges and solutions

TrueCrypt is an open source encryption tool that does a fantastic job at encrypting your files. We've covered it many times before with easy tutorials on encrypting your USB drive, and encrypting a folder - but today I'd like to show you how to create a truly hidden encrypted drive, that could remain hidden even if you were forced to reveal the password.

A "hidden" encrypted volume provides you with "plausible deniability" should the need ever arise. For example, if your drives were seized, and you were forced under order of court to reveal the password - then your hidden drive would provide an extra layer of security. How? We will first create an outer volume that is encrypted, and hide some fake files on there. Then within that encrypted outer volume, we will create a further encrypted volume. You end up with two password-protected volumes - and you can safely reveal the outer volume password - without revealing a secondary hidden volume. The TrueCrypt page has a more technical explanation of a Hidden Volume that you might want to read.

Create hidden, encrypted partition on USB drive

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Since we've covered basic Truecrypt file and folder encryptions before, today I will be using an entire partition. This could be a USB hard drive or a second hard drive in your PC. This drive will be formatted entirely in the process, so make sure there is nothing important on it.

Begin by plugging in your drive and creating a partition that we will encrypt. I showed you how to create a partition on Windows last week, but on my OS X installation I simply opened Disk Utility, find the drive in the left side, and click on the Partition tab on the right. I chose 1 partition, gave it a name, and clicked Apply.

Next, you need to copy some fake files to the encrypted disk. These can be anything, but ideally they should be private looking files, maybe some home movies - something you wouldn't mind someone seeing if you were forced to reveal passwords. Warning: You shouldn't write to this outer volume later, or your actual hidden volume may become corrupted. It is a fake storage container only to act as a diversion. Click on the button labelled Open Outer Volume, and start copying files in. Bear in mind that if you have a 1 TB drive and someone investigating finds only 100 MB of "secret" files, it may look a bit suspicious.

Make the outer volume in the same way, but this time make your password long, and really good. Include capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation. A good tactic if you don't like random passwords is to create a sentence around it like: 20MILLIONsecretF1l3$. When asked if you'll be storing large files, I suggest you choose 'yes' as the world of computing moves rapidly, and even today some movies are over 4 GB in size. Best to future-proof the drive now.

Wait again while the outer volume is encrypted. You can now mount your secure hidden volume via TrueCrypt, as it won't be mounted by default once the hidden volume is created. Just click Mount All Devices, and type in the correct password. You don't need to type both your outer volume password and your hidden one - just the hidden one is fine.

If you read through this far, then obviously you have something worth hiding, and by utilising a hidden encrypted volume, you give yourself a way out should things go awry. Why bother encrypting a drive if the big-brother police state you are living in has the power to legally demand the decryption keys, or send you to jail? Don't be a sucker, just give them the wrong keys!

You can now save your confidential data in the newly created drive. The newly created drive details will show up in the connected disk section of Rohos Mini Drive. From here you can browse through the files on the encrypted drive.

Rohos Mini Drive password-protects a USB flash drive by creating a hidden and encrypted partition on the disk. If you have many private files on the USB drive and want to keep them secret, you can protect them with a password and strong encryption using Rohos Mini Drive. It also offers a portable encryption tool for working with an encrypted partition on any PC.

Easy to encrypt, easy to use. The intuitive USB flash drive Encryption Wizard automatically detects your USB flash drive and sets the properties for the encrypted partition. You just need to provide a password to protect it. With a single click, you can save your first file in a protected volume. Encryption is automatic and on-the-fly.

In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to encrypt a USB drive using the free and open-source VeraCrypt program. By encrypting your external drive, your sensitive data is protected if any unexpected event happens such as it being lost or stolen. We will also learn how to mount the encrypted USB drive to the Linux file system.

In the next window, click Select Device button and choose a location for the outer volume. If you create a hidden encrypted volume on a USB flash drive, then select the location of the USB flash drive. Make sure you select the right one because it will be formatted and all data on that drive will be lost. My USB drive is /dev/sdc, but yours might be different.

I thought to use a little partition viewed as a CD-ROM drive, as they do in many flash drives, but this solution does not allow to write other data in a second moment, and it's visible to the user that can read the file.

You want two partitions. One of the partitions is only accessible to the software that is stored on the drive. Impossible. This is because the computer that the USB drive is plug into uses it's OWN drivers to write to the USB drive, so thus it isn't constrained to file permission.

The best you can do is create a hidden partition that only Truecrypt can understand. It will still look like it has data, but it won't be discernible. But it will look like free space and you run the risk of other users overwriting it.

You can always partition a thumb drive into multiple partitions... but I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "hidden". Honestly... the only ways to implement a truly hidden partition are very difficult and dangerous to the data at best. With true-crypt, you can make an encrypted volume that exists as a file on the "un-encrypted" drive... which you can mount to a different drive-letter... and there are ways to partition the thumb-drive and leave 1/2 of it marked as free-space... which actually contains an encrypted volume. The risk is... because it appears as free-space it might accidentally get overwritten in a dozen different ways. I've even seen a 3rd option done... where you have a true-crypt volume file on the un-encrypted space... and in the true-crypt volume.. you have it split into two partitions where the 1st is treated normally... and the 2nd is marked as free-space... which contains a 2nd true-crypted volume... which would need to be mounted as a 3rd drive.

The Rohos Mini Drive is a free disk encryption tool that aims to secure the confidential files you have on your USB flash drives. It does this by creating a hidden (virtual) and encrypted partition on the USB flash drive. So, if you are concerned about the security of the confidential files you carry around on your USB drive and want to keep them secret, you can protect them with a password and strong encryption using Rohos Mini Drive. It also offers a portable encryption tool for working with an encrypted partition on any PC. Rohos Mini Drive consists of the following key components:

Rohos Disk Encryption is the full feature software that contains all the features of Rohos Mini Drive and much more. It creates hidden and encrypted partitions on the computer or USB flash drive and can also be used to encrypt cloud storage drives such as GoogleDrive, OneDrive, and others. It protects/locks access to encrypted partitions with a hardware key which replaces the use of passwords. The application can be deployed on a Windows platform and requires administrative rights. Some of the key features and capabilities of Rohos Disk Encryption software are as follows:

Although nowadays everything is moving to the cloud and flash drives are not used often, they are still handy sometimes. Especially, if you are concerned about your privacy. Because your online accounts can get hacked, but in case of a flash drive, someone first needs to get physical access to it. And if your flash drive is encrypted, that person would also have to decrypt it, which is not easy.

For all the encryption options, I will use VeraCrypt. It is the most user-friendly and flexible encryption tool. First of all, it is available for all platforms. So, you will be able to access your encrypted data from Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Besides flash drives, VeraCrypt can be used to encrypt Linux hard drives too. The program has a fairly simple but powerful graphical interface.

Now, you need to decide on the size of the encrypted volume. You will see the maxim available size, it is 14.7 Gb in my case. Choose the size based on the amount of data you intend to store in this encrypted volume. I will create one of 1 Gb size.

Now, VeraCrypt will create an encrypted volume on your flash drive. It may take a while, depending on the size of the volume you are creating. If all goes well, you should see this screen where it says that the volume has been created correctly.

Now, I am going to test this encrypted volume. To mount the encrypted volume, go to the main window of the program and click on any free slot. Then select an encrypted file container we have just created and click on the Mount button.

When the encrypted volume is dismounted, open the USB drive again. So, the file you placed into the volume should not be accessible in the flash drive. You should only see the encrypted volume file and even if you try to open it, the system should not recognize it. So, all the data located in this file is securely encrypted and the only way to access it is to mount it with VeraCrypt. 2ff7e9595c