Does Truecrypt allow arbitrary levels of nesting hidden volumes?

Question

If it has just one level of hidden volume, that throws plausible deniability out the window. If the intimidators don't find what they're looking for in the outer volume, they'll probably believe you have a hidden volume. So in addition to decrypting the outer volume, you'll have to show them the hidden volume or they'll throw you in jail or whatever their threatening tactic is.

But if it allows arbitrary levels of nesting the hidden volumes, you could decrypt the outer volume and n levels of hidden volumes, while keeping your sensitive data at level n+1 or deeper.

Answer 1

No, you can not nest hidden volumes within Truecrypt. It's a single hidden volume per encrypted volume only.

Relevant documentation is here. If you step through the process you'll see that you have to open an encrypted volume, and create the hidden volume. At that point, it overwrites the hidden volume header area with details of the new single hidden volume, essentially obliterating the previous one.

You can nest non-hidden volumes obviously, as much as you like (so a file within a volume is actually another volume) but clearly that's harder to deny.