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I'm looking for something like TrueCrypt, which allows me to easily and seemlessly work with a large number of encrypted files, but I'd like the files to be individually encrypted, rather than encrypted into one large volume.

There are two problems with TrueCrypt's single-volume-containing-all-files method:

  • Flexibility. It takes up more space than it needs, until the volume is full, at which point I need to resize the volume, which is an enormous pain.
  • Backup. I don't want my 10GB encrypted volume marked for backup every time I add another 2KB file to it.

Does anyone know of software that works as painlessly as TrueCrypt (meaning, not 7-zip), but is more backup/resize-friendly?

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And yes, I realize for better flexibility I can create a dynamic volume instead, but this quote scares me: "WARNING: ... if data is written to a dynamic volume when there is not enough free space in its host file system, the encrypted file system may get corrupted." – BlueRaja May 3 '11 at 22:36
What OS are you using? – Arctor May 3 '11 at 23:14
@00101010: Whoops! Windows - I'll update the question – BlueRaja May 3 '11 at 23:17
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If you are using a version of Windows that supports it you can use EFS for file level encryption otherwise you can use AxCrypt.

You should also consider just encrypting the entire drive and backup drive if you are working with sensitive information as it can be written to the pagefile/hibernation file or other places that are not encrypted.

You could also use Truecrypt with something like Norton Ghost to do encrypted backups of the files from the unencrypted mount point.

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I don't want them backed up in unencrypted form, and I can't always encrypt the backup partition (think "cloud"). I will look into AxCrypt though - thanks! – BlueRaja May 3 '11 at 23:34
Yea if it is going into the cloud EFS will not work but AxCrypt will... Norton Ghost should work as well if you are backing it up to something like Dropbox that syncs to the web. – Arctor May 3 '11 at 23:42
I am sure there is something else that can do an encrypted back other than Ghost. It would be the easier solution to stick with a Truecrypt volume and have something do a scheduled backup. – Arctor May 3 '11 at 23:47
Ahh... forgot about jungledisk.com you can have it sync your files into the cloud using encryption that only you have the key to. Another is 2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbpro-features.html its a application than can encrypt its backups. – Arctor May 3 '11 at 23:49
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up vote 1 down vote accepted

I found a solution which fits my needs exactly, but it's not free.

It's called BoxCryptor, and it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.

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