Truecrypt volume size

I have read many, many post regarding truecrypt and hidden volumes and none of the posts appear to answer my questions so I thought I would post specific questions here and hope someone can answer them.

I have a 2tb usb external drive. I just completed encrypting the entire drive as one volume (no partitions). I am setting up a hidden volume.

I am confused about what I can do with the outer volume and what size I should allocate to the hidden volume.

I just placed 50 GB of photos and videos in the outer volume. Truecrypt wants to know what size I want the hidden volume.

Here are my questions.

1. Of the 2TB (not exactly because of the overhead I know), but of the 2TB if I only allocate 1TB to the hidden volume, is it safe to use the other 1TB of the outer volume, or will I risk overwriting the hidden volume
2. If I do make the hidden volume 1TB, and use the following procedure to protect the hidden volume http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume-protection , it mentions that it errors out and doesn't write to the outer volume. So am I to believe that I should just make the hidden volume as large as possible because I will not be able to use the outer volume after I create the hidden volume?
3. How would you recommend that I use the 2TB space. Obviously I do not have 2TB of information I need hidden, I only want to plan for the future and not have to do this again. Right now I can see myself using 300-500GB.
4. Can you safely change the hidden volume size after you have added data to it and there is data in the outer volume?

Obviously I do not want to have to use most of the drive as a hidden drive, but overwriting the data concerns me.

 

Supposedly a outer volume is to fool others.

For example if you create a 30GB TrueCrypt volume, even though it is empty it will occupy 30GB on your hard disk. So, on a 30GB volume, the inner volume will be about 28-29GB for your data, and the outer 1-2GB for junk data to fool others.

The inner and outer volumes are separate and cannot be over written.

Once you create a volume, you cannot reduce or increase the size of the volume. However, if you create 500GB volume and in future it is not enough, then you can create another volume with a different size.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

The smaller your hidden volume, in relation to total size, the more "space" there is in the outer "decoy" volume before getting dangerously close to the hidden volume header. I would just place the decoy files in the outer volume and forget about them...but if you must work with the decoy, always protect the hidden volume. And make backups of the headers. You can "use" the outer volume, just protect the hidden one. You can do file operations normally...unless you get close to the hidden volume, then TC will lock it and you will have to dismount. The more space you leave between the outer and hidden, the less chance you'll run into the protection mechanism.

PD

 

Pauly,

That is what I would prefer to to is protect the inner volume from damage while making use of most of the outer volume.

How could I determine where my hidden volume lies within the outer volume in order to protect it. Its not going to show as a file, and will look like random data if I am correct.

Now that I think of it maybe I should have partitioned the drive into smaller sections so that this would not be a concern.