Speeds: Encrypted Disk Images vs Disks
Hi all,
As we just had a break in at the office, I have been looking into encrypting my external disks in order to protect the data on them in case they ever fell into the wrong hands. I have seen that some are creating disk images of the data on their drives, then when they plug in the disks, mounting the disk would require a password to access the files.
This seems like a good solution, but also slightly seems like a hack. Does anyone know if this is standard practice? Another question that may seem illogical, but how does reading data from a virtual disk differ from reading data from the actual disk? Specifically in relation to speeds, fragmentation, etc. Is the data structure as safe as it would be storing on a regular journaled disk if being stored on a spared image?
Sorry for all the questions...just a bit of scary step to take when all I want is security.
Thanks in advance for any help.
kitz
As we just had a break in at the office, I have been looking into encrypting my external disks in order to protect the data on them in case they ever fell into the wrong hands. I have seen that some are creating disk images of the data on their drives, then when they plug in the disks, mounting the disk would require a password to access the files.
This seems like a good solution, but also slightly seems like a hack. Does anyone know if this is standard practice? Another question that may seem illogical, but how does reading data from a virtual disk differ from reading data from the actual disk? Specifically in relation to speeds, fragmentation, etc. Is the data structure as safe as it would be storing on a regular journaled disk if being stored on a spared image?
Sorry for all the questions...just a bit of scary step to take when all I want is security.
Thanks in advance for any help.
kitz
Comments
Hi all,
As we just had a break in at the office, I have been looking into encrypting my external disks in order to protect the data on them in case they ever fell into the wrong hands. I have seen that some are creating disk images of the data on their drives, then when they plug in the disks, mounting the disk would require a password to access the files.
This seems like a good solution, but also slightly seems like a hack.
How so?
Does anyone know if this is standard practice?
Yes, it is.
Another question that may seem illogical, but how does reading data from a virtual disk differ from reading data from the actual disk?
It doesn't, IRL.
Unless that virtual disk is in the 'cloud', because then your max. up- and download speeds come into play, obviously.
Specifically in relation to speeds, fragmentation, etc. Is the data structure as safe as it would be storing on a regular journaled disk if being stored on a spared image?
Yes.
How so?
I guess just in comparison to, say, password protecting a directory on the server, making a drive inside a drive seemed strange, but if that is standard practice, i will have to change my way of thinking!
So in regards to doing this, I would effectively just make a sparse disk image, copy all of the data from the drive to it, (test it), then delete the data from the drive apart from the disk image?
Would you suggest I use carboncopy or superduper for this kind of task?
Thanks,
Joel