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Re: LUKS partition?



21/09/2011 06:15, Perry Thompson wrote:
> Hi there. This may or may not be the best place to ask this, but I can't
> seem to find help anywhere else, so I thought I would ask.
> 
> I have begun backing up my /home to a LUKS encrypted external hard drive
> using rsync. I just got a second one external hard drive to do the same
> thing with, however I have come across something that I am not sure how
> to do.
> 
> When creating my LUKS partition, two guides I followed told me to
> directly mkfs to the /dev/mapper/LUKS, whereas another told me to create
> a partition on it. I did not create a partition on it.
> 
> What are the pros and cons to creating a partition on the decrypted
> drive? I would like to know which to do before proceeding with backing
> up my /home.
> 
> Thank you very much.
> 
> 

Hi, I never created partitions on my luks, and it works flawlessly, so
at least I can say the "direct mkfs on luks" approach is safe and
functional.

Could you provide us with an url of the guides you followed ?

Just a piece of advice from experience, backup the luks headers of your
partitions (see "luksHeaderBackup" in "man cryptsetup"). If headers are
somehow damaged due to a faulty drive, your data are irremediably lost
without the luks header backup...

Another person mentioned windows compatibility as a problem, I have used
"FreeOTFS" [1] in the past on luks encrypted usb flash disks with
success on Windows.

[1] http://www.freeotfe.org/


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