Solutions to truecrypt's fatal flaw: power outage data loss

Ulysses_, it's true that many users have lost a great deal of data while using TrueCrypt. However, this doesn't usually occur in the manner that you are describing, so you have gotten off to a bad start by blaming power outages.

But you are correct in saying that TrueCrypt could be made much more robust and fault tolerant, in which case there would be much less data loss. However, as I mentioned previously, this would have to be done at the expense of certain other features, particularly the so-called "plausible deniability" that appeals to so many users.

In order to make TrueCrypt containers much more robust (that is, more difficult to damage and more easily repaired in the event of such damage) you would need to add many new features such as container logging, identifiable header signatures, various built-in redundancies and (probably) active monitoring, and all of this would simply blow plausible deniability out of the water. I wouldn't mind any of this personally, but if these sorts of features were actually implemented then you would hear great howls of rage from the majority of the user base.

The situation that we have now, lacking the above features, merely requires the users to be a bit more careful and to make backups of critical files and objects (headers etc.). Most users seems to do alright, but admittedly they need to know what they are about and to exercise due care. You could say that using TrueCrypt is similar to riding a motorcycle in that you need to pay greater attention to what you are doing if you want to arrive safely. Thus, TrueCrypt is not suitable for careless or unskilled users.

Users who wish to use TrueCrypt in the safest possible manner should create only file-hosted containers and should avoid using partition and/or disk encryption entirely. You don't have to worry about Windows screwing up a file-hosted container, since Windows recognizes it as a valid file system object and will protect it as much as possible. You would basically have to delete or overwrite the file yourself in order to screw it up (and yes, this still happens, but at least you can't blame TrueCrypt for it. Can you?)

 

I have absolutely no connection with TrueCrypt or TrueCrypt foundation; except that I am and have been a grateful user since virtually the inception of TrueCrypt.

You probably overlooked my statement in my first post in this thread acknowledging that I too have lost TC data, ("I did at one point lose data during a reinstall of Windows -- my own carelessness -- I allowed Windows to partially overwrite a TC disk.") Note that I attributed my TC data loss to my own carelessness rather than to a TrueCrypt flaw, or to being "the unlucky one".

See dantz's thoughtful and detailed reply above for responses to the issues you raise. I would only add emphasis to the suggestion that you back up all of your encrypted data, regardless of the software or hardware you use for encryption.

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Thanks to everyone. And if S.B. is only an enthusiastic user apologies. How about the following solution?

1. Avoid FDE, use container files that are somewhat safer, and since container-file encryption can be broken by certain software that finds keys in traces left in the paging file and elsewhere, add 2. below:

2. Use Shadow Defender that restores the system partition instantly in every shutdown or reboot, taking care so no traces are left. It leave no traces by writing disk deltas to ram and encrypting them so when it runs out of ram and puts the deltas into a hidden place in the system partition, the deltas are in an encrypted format and cannot be recovered. So you get the key advantage of FDE that it beats Elmosoft but none of the risk of excessive data loss.

3. Ensure paging only uses the system partition.

4. Do not mount private data after or before a visit to dodgy sites but reboot first and reboot after the visit too.

5. Instead of frequent backups that are not practical, use snapshot technology like Comodo Time Machine or Rollback Rx on the data partition. Snapshots are like instant backups that can be instantly restored, so any truecrypt corruption can be undone instantly. Plus a large number of snapshots can be held in a partition, they are like incremental backups of sectors.

6. Take conventional slow backups to an external hard disk.

7. Use a ups (recommended models?).