Norton PGP Encryption with DrivePool

[Paul]

Has anyone had success using something like Norton PGP to encrypt the underlying disks in a pool? All the searches I ran so far seem to be geared toward Truecrypt and Bitlocker.

 

Does drivepool behave poorly if it takes a while for all the disks in a pool to come online? PGP encrypted drives come online pretty fast but they wouldn't come online until a little while after the system boots and I input the password. There's also the chance that the system reboots at night for an update and then it sits there waiting for a few hours for me to re-enter my password.

 

I'm researching bitlocker as an alternative but I would prefer to stick with PGP.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

It really depends on how it works, actually. 

 

What specific product are you using (can you link it)?

[Paul]

I wanted to use Norton PGP Whole Disk Encryption.

They keep changing the name of the platform.

http://www.symantec.com/endpoint-encryption/?fid=encryption

[Christopher (Drashna)]

It looks like the encryption is done very low level and very early on, and automatically unlocks the drives early in the boot process. 

 

However, it does look to use a file system filter to facilitate the encryption, so you may need to disable the "Bypass file system filters" option to get the data to read properly. 

 

If you're using the 2.2.0.651 beta, click on "Pool Options" -> Performance -> "Bypass file system filters" option, and make sure it's disabled.

 

If you're using the release version (2.1.1.561), you'll want to upgrade to the beta or use the advanced config file to disable this:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Advanced_Settings

Set the "CoveFs_BypassNtfsFilters" value to "False" and reboot.

 

However, if the configuration you're using does require you to unlock the drives, then yes, you want to use the BitLocker setting:

"BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" (and set this to true), if you're using the release version (it's defaulted to enabled in the beta builds).