Question

How to auto dismount a USB flash drive that has TrueCrypt on it

Asked by: JediBecker

Hi there,

I apologize in advance for my abundant ignorance here. Please bear with me and let me explain what I'm trying to do first, and then I'll get to my questions.

I'm trying to set-up encrypted USB drives for several coworkers. I used the excellent instructions in the following link to setup the USB drives so they automatically prompt for a password when they are inserted:

http://glosoli.blogspot.com/2005/09/encrypted-thumb-drive-and-autoplay.html

However, I know the users I'm doing this for, and there is zero chance that they will always remember to dismount the drive explicitly when they are done. The likely use case is they put in the drive, copy some files to it, and immediately yank it out to take it home.

I have three questions:

1) What happens exactly if you pull out the USB drive without dismounting the TC drive? It seems a subsequent user on the machine might have access to whatever files were already in memory. Does it also put the integrity of the TC data file at risk?

2) Is there a solution to this that does not involve the user explicitly dismounting? I thought about trying to set it up to auto-dismount after 1 minute, but that isn't really ideal.  I know on the Kingston USB drives, you can pull the drive out without dismounting and have many fewer problems that seems to happen with this TrueCrypt solution.

3) Is explicitly having to dismount something that would be the case no matter what encryption you used? That is, the drives are Lexar Jump Drives and they came with SecureII software from Lexar. I found it clunky and greatly preferred the way you could setup TrueCrypt to start. But do other solutions handle pulling out a USB drive without dismounting any differently?

Without solving that, I'm certain users will use the drives without encryption. They claim that when they use an unsecure USB drive now and yank it out without dismounting, they never have any problems.

Thanks in advance for any advice. It would be GREATLY appreciated!

-Dave

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Asked On
2006-06-19 at 15:49:41ID21891903
Tags

truecrypt

,

drive

,

usb

,

flash

,

dismount

Topic

Hard Drives & Storage

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
11

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Expert Comment

by: kiranghagPosted on 2006-06-19 at 21:09:33ID: 16939636

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by: kiranghagPosted on 2006-06-19 at 21:11:19ID: 16939641

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Accepted Solution

by: garycasePosted on 2006-06-20 at 01:37:26ID: 16940522

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by: imacgoufPosted on 2006-06-20 at 03:49:47ID: 16941096

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by: imacgoufPosted on 2006-06-20 at 04:05:42ID: 16941165

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by: JediBeckerPosted on 2006-06-20 at 06:08:38ID: 16941952

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by: garycasePosted on 2006-06-20 at 09:38:59ID: 16944111

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by: garycasePosted on 2006-06-20 at 09:57:11ID: 16944276

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by: JediBeckerPosted on 2006-06-20 at 14:25:23ID: 16946628

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by: garycasePosted on 2006-06-21 at 10:07:53ID: 16953323

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by: JediBeckerPosted on 2006-06-21 at 13:31:55ID: 16955013

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