General TC questions and Acronis

I know a little bit about encryptions but i don't know the nittey gritty details. I was talking to a friend that at least knows more than me before posting and he raised some questions for me.

I wanted to use TC to encrypt my back-up drives and my SOP is to use AES/twofish/serpent with a keyfile....good so far right? I have no idea if keyfiles really do anything. I also read that whirlpool is debatable better...i use SHA/wirlpool depending on my mood...does it matter?

So the two big questions i have is:

1.) can i encrypted a hardrive with TC and have TC containers in it? My friend was saying they might cause conflicts due to some reference to Apples macs having issues with encrypted drives with an encrypted folder...any ideas?

My general plan was to use my 3TB drive and encrypt the drive first with TC and make 3-5 TC files that open up to another 3-5 TC files. This way they have to pick and choose between a group of TC files and break it and than get another group of TC files. with 3 to 3 that gives me 12 containers with 2 levels with 5 to 5 that gives me 30 with 2 levels not including the encrypted drive.

So will that cause a conflict with encrypted files within encrypted files and in an encrypted drive?


2.) can you clone that drive? I wanted to be able to clone it as well so i have a back up just in case something bricks or drive crashes. As far as i understand that shouldn't be an issue.


On a separate note if I encrypt my OS drive will acronis work with backing it up? Also if above works.....can i do that with acronis?


I have googled around a good bit.....4-6 hours and have yet to find a good answer for any of those. (plus in the past i have googled around about this but have finally decided to post and ask.)


As always, I appreciate any help!!!

HF

Anyways....this is also dependent on if TC actually works and doesn't have a backdoor :/ Being a surf sucks.

 

Yes, you can have containers on encrypted partitions/devices on Windows. No clue about OSX if that is what you are running.

You can back up an encrypted partition/device. It will have to either be a sector by sector backup (backup will be the same size as the entire drive) or you can do a compressed backup with Windows running, and either store it in another TC container, or use the backup software's built in encryption feature. I have never tried 'cloning' with something like Gparted.

Your scheme seems overly complicated, but whatever works for you.

 

Does container in container work too or is it like a raid 0 the more you do like that the great the chances of a crash?

Also is there any other note worthy programs like TC to encrypt with? I don't mind adding another one to complicate it even more:
from what i read from another thread it is appearing Bestcrypt is the only other real option but please let me know...the help is appreciated.


Better my chances of having at least one program that isn't broken or have a back door.....after the last couple years i have high doubts that anything isn't backdoored anymore.

EDIT: yea sorry i am using Win7 home IIRC.

 

Also can you and how do you store viruses and malware and the sorts in TC containers. I want to booby trap them to high hell.