Re: Backup of Encrypted Partition

On Mar 17, 18:38, Sanwar Ali wrote:
} Subject: Backup of Encrypted Partition
} Hi
} 
} Apologies if this is too much of a beginner's Q.
} 
} Does anyone know how to backup a "SecureDrive" partition onto tape 
} quickly and easily.
} 
} HPACK is really slow.
} 
} PKZIP and then PGP is slow.
} 
} RAWDISK, seems to be quite complex (perhaps I am just stupid!), and I 
} am terrified of making some sort of terrible mistake.
} 
} I have about 100MB in the partition.  I have a pretty out of date 
} computer which is a 386 33MHz running Windows.


Ease of backup is one of the strengths of CFS which is a cryptographic
filesystem for various flavours of UNIX and Linux.

With CFS the encrypted files live in the ordinary UNIX filesystem 
(their names are also encrypted), so one can backup encrypted data 
without decrypting to make things intelligible and then encrypting to 
secure the tape. Backups take no more time than backups of ordinary 
unencrypted files and don't require any special tools (ufsdump, GNU 
tar, GNU cpio work fine). You backup files individually, which means 
you can also restore them individually, i.e. without restoring a 
whole partition. 

Of course, this doesn't solve your problem, because you are running 
Windows. But CFS might be incentive to also run a more feature-rich
operating system on your PC. You don't need to give up DOS/Windows
to also run Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Unixware, etc. 


-- 
Mark Henderson -- markh@wimsey.bc.ca, mch@squirrel.com, henderso@netcom.com
ViaCrypt PGP Key Fingerprint: 21 F6 AF 2B 6A 8A 0B E1  A1 2A 2A 06 4A D5 92 46
unstrip for Solaris, Wimsey crypto archive, TECO, computer security links,
change-sun-hostid, Sun NVRAM/hostid FAQ - http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel

Mark C. Henderson (mch@squirrel.com) wrote:
: On Mar 17, 18:38, Sanwar Ali wrote:
: } Subject: Backup of Encrypted Partition
: } Hi
: } 
: } Apologies if this is too much of a beginner's Q.
: } 
: } Does anyone know how to backup a "SecureDrive" partition onto tape 
: } quickly and easily.
: } 
: } HPACK is really slow.
: } 
: } PKZIP and then PGP is slow.
: } 
: } RAWDISK, seems to be quite complex (perhaps I am just stupid!), and I 
: } am terrified of making some sort of terrible mistake.
: } 
: } I have about 100MB in the partition.  I have a pretty out of date 
: } computer which is a 386 33MHz running Windows.
: 
: 
: Ease of backup is one of the strengths of CFS which is a cryptographic
: filesystem for various flavours of UNIX and Linux.


If you have Linux installed, you can backup your dos securedrive partition
by doing

cat /dev/hda2 >/dev/ftape
         ^^^^
         (or whatever your securedrive partition is)


No decrypting necessary.  If the partition is only 100MB then it ought to 
fit on a standard qic-80 tape.