Hello!

I have bought an external HDD, more exactly a WD My Passport Ultra 2TB, and I am wondering whether I should encrypt it or not.
I am afraid that if I will encrypt it, I will not be able to backup, or what's even worse, restore my OS in a non-windows environment, that is by means of a software ran from a CD or USB flash drive.

Does any know more on this?

Regards,
Daniel

The question is too vague to answer really.

there are many types of encryption, software programs, and failures. Sometimes the OS matters, Sometimes the software matters and sometimes the user skill matters. Unless you can predict what the failures would be, I see no way of coming up with anything to answer this.

You should choose your encryption as one that allows you to backup based on your knowledge, or what you can learn.
You should choose a backup solution such that if your primary data is destroyed, it doesn't matter(this is what a good backup plan is all about)
finally, you should backup, and verify your backups based on your data and its importance for "currentness"

a finance dept might need hourly backups that can be restored so that you lose at most an hours data.
a home movie server might be ok with a weekly or a monthly backup and incrementals.

encrypting or not is nothing to do with losing data or not - if your data should not fall into view of other, yes you encrypt. If you don't need it, don't. If you only need to encrypt some, then just encrypt that ( a truecrypt volume or something)

hope that helps a bit, feel free to discuss more if you like
cheers

Thank you HaQue!

I've just tested the encryption of the volume and, as it was logical, one cannot backup on or restore from an encrypted or password protected HDD.

dont encrypt it as if it fails then your going to have pay a lot more money to get your data.

remove the crappy software that built into the drive.

you have software encryption and hardware encryption
sometime it encryption on the fly.

its a pain and not needed.

No, think about Encryption and backup so that If something fails, you dont have to pay for data recovery.
Encryption is a valid thing to do, but it isn't for everybody. Different horses for different courses.


If it is so crappy, why is it so hard to breakin(recover data)?
refer to answer 1.



There are many different types of encryption. follow these steps:

1. do I need encryption?
2. If yes, then how strong?
3. How do I implement the chosen strength, While working with my backup solution?
4. test, rinse , repeat.

There are many consulting firms that can help with this, or get some research done.

To say that one doesnt need backups, or should encrypt, without knowing specific details of the environment is foolhardy IMHO.