Encrypt Multiple Files into Individual Volumes Easily?

Question

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?

Answer 1

I run into the same problem when trying to encrypt and upload a folder containing many subfolders with video and image files, and this is what I use before I upload it to cloud storage.

https://www.aescrypt.com/download/

I use the console version as the GUI context menu way cannot encrypt subfolders, and it needs to be done in batch.

The folder to be encrypted is at C:\Upload\GL. I clean up all my files except the *.aes.

Save and run this in a .bat file

REM ENCRYPT ALL FILES to *.aes
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.*) DO aescrypt -e -p myPassword "%%A"

REM CLEAN UP
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.AVI) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.MKV) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.MPG) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.MP4) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.JPG) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.PNG) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.BUP) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.IFO) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.VOB) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.DAT) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.M2TS) DO del "%%A"
FOR /R "C:\Upload\GL" %%A IN (*.TS) DO del "%%A"

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

I've also found a popular alternative called Cloudfogger.

While BoxCryptor mounts my encrypted folder as a separate drive, CloudFogger keeps the file-names exactly as they are and simply encrypts them in-place. Unfortunately, this means CloudFogger cannot encrypt filenames.

I decided against Cloudfogger because, like BoxCryptor, they have stupid arbitrary limits on how much you can encrypt using the free version. However, unlike BoxCryptor, there is no paid version yet, meaning there is no way to remove this restriction!