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Encryption And Off-site Backup Storage (Home) ; Overview ; The Problem ; The Essence Of The Solution ; How Long Does It Take To Do A Backup? ; Assumptions ; Breakdown Of Tasks ; The Stand-Alone Solution ; The Networked Solution ; Let’s Get Started ; Mounting The Backup Drive ; Mounting An Encrypted Drive ; Waiting For The Backup Drive ; Processing Each Local Drive ; RoboCopy New And Later Files ; RoboCopy Parameter Files ; Append Session Details To A Log File ; Shutting Down the Computer ; Review For Local Systems ; Putting Together The Local Backup System ; SUBSTituting A Drive For A Folder ; Assembling The Batch File ; ( TITLE commands ); Running The Backup Batch File ; Examining Our Results ; Waiting For A Set Of Drives ; Issue the Backup Command To A Set Of Drives ; Modifying The Driving Batch File ; What About The Log File? ; The Upgraded Set Of Batch Files ; Encryption of backup data ; What Is Involved In Encrypting A Backup Device? ; ( Advice On Passwords ); What Is Involved In Mounting An Encrypted Device? ; User Mounted Or Automated? ; Using A DOS Batch File To Facilitate Mounting ; Using A DOS Batch File To Facilitate Dismounts ; Making The External Drives Available Across The Network ; Mounting A Shared Drive For Sharing ; Installing On A Networked Computer ; Running On The Big Beige Box ; An Improved Method Of Waiting ; Shutdown Or Restart? ; At Long Last! A Working Version! ; The Backup.BAT file ; The Mount.BAT file ; The ProcessDrive.BAT file ; The Shutdown.BAT File ; The Encryption Process
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Toronto and Mississauga, Friday, December 03, 2010 8:27 AM
Copyright © 1996-2010 Chris Greaves. All Rights Reserved.
What Is Involved In Mounting An Encrypted Device?
Not a lot.
Bear in mind that regardles sof whether your encrypt your external drives, you’ll always be faced with some operator action – plugging them in to the computer – so the optional, but highly recommended intervention for encrypted drives does not suddenly add user-intervention to your backup process.
Run TrueCrypt. You’ll be presented with a screen that looks like this:
Scared you, didn’t it? Looks as if your two USB external drives, F: and H: are not there.
Scared me too, one time. I thought I’d lost BOTH my backup devices with all the archived and historic data.
No. Remember when we right-clicked on the drives in Windows explorer and were asked if we wanted to format them? In a weird way, since Windows thinks that they are not formatted, they don’t appear as valid drives in TrueCrypt’s drive list.
But we know that they are there!
Select an appropriate drive letter - I'm using "X" as you can see in the partly-hidden dialog box .
Choose the Select Device command and then select an appropriate device. I’m going to map the USB device seen here as “F:” to the drive “X:” (and then I’ll repeat this process and associate the “H” USB device with the drive “Y:).
Choose the Mount command and key in your password; you chose this password when you encrypted your drive.
When the password is accepted, TrueCrypt will return to the main dialog, showing that (in my case) the drive X: has been mapped to the appropriate USB device.
When both my USB devices have been mounted and mapped, the TrueCrypt dialog looks like this.
We’re done.
Exit from the trueCrypt dialog and check what’s happening with Windows Explorer.
In the screen snapshot you can see that the physical devices F: and H: exist, but Windows XP claims to know nothing about them; from Windows’s point of view, they are not formatted and hence aren’t available to you.
But TrueCrypt has made them accessible to Windows, and hence to us, as drives X: and Y:.
Look! There they are. There's even a nifty little "Backup.LOG” file on each encrypted USB external backup drive. Hooray!
(You can see that I have three networked computers backed up; The LAPtop, the Big Beige Box (“BBB”) and the old IBM server.).
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Toronto and Mississauga, Friday, December 03, 2010 8:27 AM
Copyright © 1996-2010 Chris Greaves. All Rights Reserved.