Often I see questions pop up on the forum regarding safe keeping of passwords and data. I decided to write up a detailed instructions on the encryption of data.
For creating encrypted data base, I use software called VeraCrypt. It is free and open source. More details on the software here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeraCryptDownload and install the software here:
https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads.html1. Open the software, double click "Create Volume:
2. Now we click the check mark next to "Create an encrypted file container" and click next
3. During the next step we decide whether we want to create a regular encrypted volume or one with double encryption. In these instructions I am going to show regularly encrypted volume. So, we choose "Standard VeraCrypt volume" and click next
4. New we connect our usb drive to the computer. During this step we have to manually enter the path to the file which is going to be placed on the USB. For this open "my computer" and see under which name is our USB (in my case it is E). So, we enter our path for the file being created and click next.
5. Choosing type of encryption as "Twofish", and clicking next
6. Need to choose the encryption size. Here you are going to have to judge yourself. If you are planning to have encrypted just password database and private keys, you will not need much space. My recommendation then would be to take up a small amount of the USB and the rest of it to fill up with various files. This is done so if ever your usb was lost or stolen, and open by a third party, the file would not stick out.
My usb drive size is 3.7gb so I am choosing 1gb for encryption file size and leaving 2.7 gb empty
7. Now need to come up with a password. Password needs to be new and not something you use everywhere else. Better to make something out of 15-20 various symbols with different sizes. Write it down on the paper for you. After a few days on constant input you can throw away the paper
8. Start up the generation of you key encryption, move your mouse around, the key will be generated quicker. When the bar is fully green, press Format
9. The process of encryption itself has began. The larger size you picked during step 6, the longer it will take. For example when I was encrypting 60 gb it took me 30 minutes. Process is complete when you see this message
On the next window press Exit. On this step the process of encryption is complete. Now I will show you how to use it. Access your USB and we see this kind of file. It can ONLY be opened with the software VeraCrypt AND putting in your set password
Upon accessing VeraCrypt we see many different unused volumes in your system. Choose one, say A. Click select file and our created file on the usb and click mount
On the next window enter the password you created during step 7 and click ok. Access my computer and we observe the new local drive.
This is our encrypted volume which appeared only after we entered the password from it. In it we can store our password, private keys etc....
IMPORTANT: Upong ending your work, do not forget to close the volume, otherwise you may risk of losing your data. For this we press Dismount in VeraCrypt
After this we can dismount the USB from the PC (not forgetting about the safe way to eject the usb and not just pulling it out). The process of creating encrypted volume/database will take about 20 minutes but save you a lot of time you could have spent worrying about keeping your data safe
Added a brief description of other programs for data encryption: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4588410
