Encrypting Windows 7

[lazy_boy]

Hi I've got Windows 7 and I'm looking to encrypt my HDD I've been told TrueCrypt is a good crypting system but is it good enough or is there anything better than that? Thanks

[bthylafh]

I'm using Truecrypt on my work laptop. It's pretty decent, and it's free; you should use it.

[Madman]

If I read somewhere correctly, bitlocker encryption can be used for system wide encryption as well.

[notfred]

This isn't really a Networking question so I've moved it to the Windows forum.

[Usacomp2k3]

If you have Enterprise or Ultimate, you can use bitlocker. Don't know how well it works though. We have PGP at work (used to have truecrypt) and it's a kludge. Note very secure, IMHO either.

[axeman]

Where I used to work, we went through the process of adopting PGP WDE, and subsequently trying to get rid of it. POS that never worked well, has horrible license model, and this was even before they got bought out by Symantec.

[Ryu Connor]

Bitlocker works well, but the fact you need either Enterprise of Ultimate seems to be the hitch for most people.

[dextrous]

We use McAfee Endpoint Encryption here. It's aimed at the enterprise, but IMHO, it's not really ready for prime time in an enterpise environment.

[BIF]

We also use Endpoint.

Endpoint works in a single-signon environment, and so it automatically changes your encryption key whenever you change your Windows logon password.

I have never had any problems, even when Endpoint was owned and provided by another company (Guardian Edge, I think). Never an issue with it in either incarnation...that I know of. My biggest fears for a personal system would always be

1. getting locked out by mistake
2. being unable to manage, diagnose, repair, or recover my hard drive partitions with normal utilities

But in a centrally-managed corporate environment, we have people to take care of concern #1.

Additionally, we have centralized backup and recovery (and nobody really keeps critical data on their local hard drives anymore), so concern #2 is mostly a non-issue.

[absurdity]

lazy_boy, are you just working on a standalone system? Truecrypt would probably be the way to go.

Bitlocker requires either a TPM or a USB flash drive to store the key, something to keep in mind. Link: http://bit.ly/HHvT6T

I haven't worked with PGP, but I'm guessing the product hasn't improved much since Symantec bought it (few things do).

[Madman]

What are your requirements? Maybe it's easier to have a Linux with build in encryption on either VHD or spare partition for sensitive data?