extcv - expand a TrueCrypt volume without reformatting

Hi,

maybe some people here are interested in a tool to expand a TrueCrypt volume on the fly (without reformatting).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/extcv/

All kind of volumes (container files, disks and partitions) formatted with NTFS are supported. The only condition is that there must be enough free space on the host drive or host device of the TrueCrypt volume.

I wrote this software to be able to dynamically expand a TrueCrypt volume over additional hard disks (to do this: 1. create a partition-hosted TrueCrypt volume on a dynamic disk, 2. extend this 'partition' by creating a 'spanned volume', 3. run extcv to expand the TrueCrypt volume either - steps 2&3 can be repeated whenever you need more space).

Runs on all MS Windows platforms supported by TrueCrypt 6.2a, full source code is available (derived from TrueCrypt source).

In principle the expansion consists of the following steps:

1. allocate disk space (only for container files)
2. fill new space with random data (if requested by user)
3. write new backup header
4. write new primary header
5. wipe old backup header
6. mount the volume
7. expand the file system (only NTFS)
8. dismount the volume

Comments or bug reports on the software and source code are welcome. Please post them here or at the Sourceforge-Tracker.

Kih-Oskh

 

has anyone tested this?

 

I have, I have expanded around 10 containers with it, no problems so far. However the version 0.5 is not compatible with the lastest version of TrueCrypt, it only works with 6.2a... it would need to be updated.