Dualboot harddisk encryption

Posted by amfcosta on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by amfcosta
Published on 2011-11-12T22:58:47Z Indexed on 2011/11/13 2:08 UTC
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dual-boot

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encryption

I have a system with both Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7 and I want to encrypt the whole harddisk or at least some of my partitions.

My partition table is something like this (the ones marked with * are the ones that need to be encrypted):

Windows boot reserved partition
*Windows system partition (ntfs)
*Windows data partition (ntfs)
Ubuntu root partition (ext4)
*Ubuntu home partition (ext4)
Ubuntu swap

As I said I don't need to encrypt the whole disk.

What is the best way to accomplish this? Maybe something (TrueCrypt?) where I enter the password before the system boots so that it decrypts the whole hdd? Or maybe individual encryption using Windows-only encryption (for Windows partitions) and Ubuntu home encryption (well, for Ubuntu home partition)?

By the way, I almost always use Ubuntu, so it would be nice if I could continue to boot Ubuntu by default but have an option to boot Windows too (like in grub).

EDIT: I was thinking of doing this: encrypting ubuntu home with eCryptfs (I think this is used to encrypt home when selected during installation). Encrypting Windows partitions with TrueCrypt. Still having Grub as a bootloader, when I choose ubuntu everything goes as normal (home is decrypted when login in). When I choose windows the TrueCrypt password prompt shows and windows boots.

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