Encryption (Bitlocker) with Pool?

[thepregnantgod]

I'm going to do some research on my own, but I figured I'd shotgun my request to the community as well.

 

I have 24 3-4tb drives Pool'd together into a whopping 70tb directory that houses all my music, media, documents, computer backups, etc.

 

I'm interested in encrypting these files but still want to be able to stream them throughout the home to the rest of my PCs.  I don't need to stream them to mobile devices outside my intranet (yet).

 

I've never used encryption.  

 

My fear is that, assuming I don't change my habits, I will break and rebuild this pool twice a year.  I've already encountered the pain in the butt problem with security permissions everytime I reload the OS and add the pool.  I don't want to enable encryption to find out that I've shot myself in the foot and locked all my files from myself forever and ever and ever.

 

So...anyone with experience, please let me know how Bitlocker works?  Does it, in effect, password protect each file that can be unlocked on the fly by another PC that has the key?

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

We absolutely support BitLocker. There is an advanced configuration file that you will want to set up, to enable better support for it.

 

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

And you'll want to set "BitLocker_PoolPartUnlockDetect" to "True".

Save the file, and make sure you rename it to "DrivePool.Service.exe.config" 

 

Or for WHS2011: 

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Advanced_Settings

And you'll want to set "BitLocker" to "True".

Save the file, and make sure you rename it to "DrivePool.Service.exe.config" 

 

 

You will either need to unlock the drives manually each time you boot, or you will need to encrypt the system disk and enable automatic unlocking (recommended)

 

 

Though, to encrypt the system disk, you normally need "TPM" support on the motherboard. If you don't have it, there is a way to disable the need for it:

Windows 7/WHS2011: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/6229/how-to-use-bitlocker-on-drives-without-tpm/

Windows 8/Server 2012: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831507.aspx#BKMK_TPMChipSupport

 

 

As for "shooting yourself in the foot", just make sure you have the recovery key somewhere safe, just in case.

And no, BitLocker protects the entire volume. The entire volume (disk) is encrypted. To access anything on the disk, it needs to be unlocked. Once that's done, the entire contents are accessible.

 

 

Worst case here, if you have a "test" machine you can use, you could use that and see if it's what you want for your system.