From: Ray Arachelian <sunder@dorsai.dorsai.org>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 95 16:43:08 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Secure Drive questions...
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951005160110.26476B-100000@dorsai.dorsai.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Hi, I recently got me a much larger hard drive and would like to encrypt 
more than one partition using SecureDrive.  I'm using an old 1.1 version 
which, when I log into one partition, the others vanish.  I'm using the 
same passphrase on both paritions.

I've never upgraded because the previous version did what I wanted it to 
do very well and I have never had a problem with it.  I've noticed that 
on some machines SecureDevice failed where SecureDrive 1.1 worked 
perfectly...  So I've stuck with that... but now, I'd rather not join the 
two partitions together if I can help it... too much work to copy 
everything off, repartition, restore, etc...  (This is a 1.2Gb WD Caviar 
drive using the Disk Manager crud that makes the drive visible to DOS by 
loading some DMDRVR.BIN driver only - my BIOS only sees 550Mb or so 
without it...)

Is this a question of upgrading, if so, what's the latest version?  And 
are there any catches, snags, or problems to watch out for before I 
potentially kill my drives? :-)

A few more questions, I've left a bit of space for me to experiment with 
something like OS/2Warp or Win95 or even Netware 4.1 (got a cool 2 user 
license for $50 from Novell I'd like to install.)  Now while OS/2 and 
Win95 can see FAT partitions, what will stop them from trying to run 
something like chkdsk on it?  Can I load the secure drive tsr to keep the 
encrypted drive safe with those operating systems?  

(I know Netware will keep its mits off non-Netware partitions, so that's 
a safe bet - but then I don't have another PC to use as a host so this will
be a clientless server. Just want to experiment with it I guess...  :-)

I'd also consider messing with NT, I have enough RAM and space, but 
anyone know a place I can get a good price for it? $400 is a bit steep 
for an OS I probably won't do much with.

And YES, I will install Linux - soon as I can get it to recognize my 
I/O-less FutureDomain clone SCSI controller. (It's based on the 950 chip, 
no I/O address, uses int 15 and DMA for transfers..)   Works okay under 
Coherent - then again, I'm using the IDE controller under Coherent... :-)
The SCSI FD controller is for the CDROM drive...

==========================================================================
 + ^ + |  Ray Arachelian | Amerika: The land of the Freeh. |   _ |>
  \|/  |sunder@dorsai.org| Where day by day, yet another   |   \ |
<--+-->|                 | Constitutional right vanishes.  |    \|
  /|\  |    Just Say     |                                 |    <|\
 + v + | "No" to the NSA!| Jail the censor, not the author!|    <| n
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