Accessing encrypted harddrives

[ampakine]

If I encrypt an external harddrive with truecrypt then access it with another computer, would that other computer need to have truecrypt to decrypt the data? Similarly if I encrypted a harddrive with linux would I only be able to access it with linux?

[mShred]

I don't know much about encryption, but i'm assuming if you were using 3rd party software to encrypt it, like Truecrypt, then you would probably want Truecrypt on the other computer to decrypt it. As for the HDD with linux, i wouldn't really know. You'd probably need another linux partition to decrypt it.. Only assuming of course. You might be able to have some software decrypt it from Windows. I have no idea though, and i'm too lazy to Google it.

[Goatboy]

In theory you can just use any program that uses the same encryption (AES, DES, Blowfish, what have you) to decrypt it. However I would strongly recommend TC. As for Linux, I assume you mean the encrypted home partition. I actually just had this problem where my root partition would not mount (I know, bad idea using only root and swap partitions) so I could not access my home directory. I managed to get it with a live CD, but I fell asleep before I could decrypt it =\

[ampakine]

In theory you can just use any program that uses the same encryption (AES, DES, Blowfish, what have you) to decrypt it. However I would strongly recommend TC. As for Linux, I assume you mean the encrypted home partition. I actually just had this problem where my root partition would not mount (I know, bad idea using only root and swap partitions) so I could not access my home directory. I managed to get it with a live CD, but I fell asleep before I could decrypt it =\

Same thing happened to me the other day, I installed Ubuntu 11 and ticked the "encrypt your home directory" box and it worked fine for a few hours but I did an unclean shutdown and when I rebooted it would no longer mount the home directory. Nautilius wouldn't even startup but thunar worked fine for some reason.