Three large containers - One or three partitions?

I need to create three separate truecrypt containers each about 1TB. My question is, is it better to have a single 3TB partition and place all three truecrypt containers (probably in the root directory) in it or create three separate 1TB partitions and create a single container in each (also probably in the root directory), filling the partition.

When I say "better". I mean regarding safety, security, ease of use and any other criteria you may find applicable.

I am a basic home/office user and my actual security concerns are more for personal privacy, than worrying about corporate or criminal shenanigans. I will be doing basic encryption, and require no hidden volumes or the like. Basic, simple use of Truecrypt.

One other factor that may be of importance is that I will be maintaining two other copies of all three containers on additional external drives (one copy onsite and one copy offsite).

TIA RJB

 

When it comes to partitions, my motto is "as few as needed, but no fewer." I don't see any security gain from having more partitions, so I would use one.

 

From reading your original post describing your needs and "experience level" with TC, I would recommend using file based volumes alone. Your windows OS will leave the 3TB drive alone since it will not appear RAW (windows will see a filesystem) to TC. When you device encrypt a drive there are some precautions to take, and some concerns that can become problematic for users. It makes absolutely no difference if you use one large partition or several 1 TB partitions if you are using file based volumes. If you decide to use device encrypted volumes that is another approach entirely, but then you likely know that.

From strictly a security standpoint with either approach the external media volumes should be secure. Your weakest "link in the chain" is from the computer you are using to pass the data to the externals. That is another thread and not something you brought up here.

 

I prefer to store my file-hosted containers within a single partition which is used only for that purpose. I begin by doing a full format of the partition, thus filling its free space with zeros. I also make sure that each stored file is fully contiguous, since fragmented files are much harder to recover if something should go wrong. (However, this is not a strict requirement, it's merely my preference. If you have good backups then you don't need to be overly concerned with this.)

If you want all three of your files to remain contiguous then the partition that you store them in will need to have a fair bit of extra space so that none of the files will be forced to span the MFT or other file system structures. Also, you would need to check the partition after creating or copying in the files to see if any of them were fragmented.