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/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4e79976a.2030...@googlemail.com
