question about wear leveling and true crypt

This is my first post but i am hope i am in the right sections but if it is wrong, mods, move this post to appropriate section.

i have searched on the internet about wearleveling and truecrypt. so far i found this but i have not got the answer that i am looking for.

I started using truecrypt like 2-3 weeks ago and i already encrypted my flashdrives but i am wondering if my seagate portable 1tb ext hd have wear leveling and my hard drive too. will wear leveling affect the encryption and make it easier to crack in if i disabled sleep mode and hibernation mode?

 

Welcome.

Just make a quick note that with your volumes MOUNTED you have no Truecrypt protection. I assume you know that but from your post about hibernation it is uncertain.

Wear leveling: applies more to a flash device but also to any and all hardware storage media in some form. In a perfect world you would buy new hardware and use WDE encryption right from the start. If you did that you would have ZERO leveling concerns ever. When a piece of hardware has sectors go bad that means that the particular sector no longer gets used by the device. If you have sensitive data stored on those areas then your information will remain there, except that a forensic tool might easily be able to gain access to those sectors. If the data is encrypted it is @#$@$%@#%$ to the examiner. If its plain text its completely readable. My personal take (and opinions vary) is that if I had an OLD/well used device and it was used with extremely sensitive data unencrypted, I would toss it and buy a new one with WDE out of the box. It depends upon how sensitive the data already on the drive was. Candidly, very few users have such a strong threat model. I am only stating what it would take to be CERTAIN you were covered completely.

 

Palancar, thank you for answering it. right now i already have 2 flash drive brand new and i already encrypt it so i am guessing that is good but what about me putting my encrypted flash drive to my unencrypted hard rive, can that comprise my security?

also, if i already have data on my old system but holds no sensitive information and i encrypt it so if they examine and find the unecrypted sections of the old data only, am i right?

sorry, i'm not that great with computers unlike you guys.