Securing a system

gameover · 12 Aug 2010 at 18:21

Hi,

I've always never bothered with passwords - there was very little chance anyone else would ever even see my computer, or steal it.

Now though, i've moved somewhere that i am a bit concerened that it may get stolen. How can i best secure the system?

Ideally i'd want some passwords, and without entering those passwords you can't read any data from the hard drives.

At the moment i just have a basic windows password. I may set up a pw in bios but that seems pointless as you can just take the batter out.

what other options do i have? i've heard a lot about truecrypt. Is encoding everything in truecrypt fast at all (for normal web use, not games)?

Philtor · 13 Aug 2010 at 08:01

Truecrypt is what most people use and will do what you are looking to do just fine. Your system may also have a BIOS password feature meaning you can set a password that is stored within the BIOS and is very secure providing you can stick a padlock on your case access panel such as found on the Antec 300 case for example.

tntcoder · 13 Aug 2010 at 15:10

I wouldn't bother with a BIOS password. Trivial to bypass. And if your PC is stolen then a padlock wont be much good also a lot of mobos have cmos reset switchs on the back of the case these days.

Truecrypt your root drives as said and you will be sorted

Ev0 · 13 Aug 2010 at 15:28

tntcoder said:
Truecrypt your root drives as said and you will be sorted

If it's theft you are worried about then this.

SiriusB · 13 Aug 2010 at 15:41

TrueCrypt is very good and if you don't want anything special, pretty quick and painless to set up. If you are really paranoid, you can set up a hidden Windows partition and install a dummy Windows install in its place.

Though unless the data you have is worth kidnapping you over, I doubt you need to go that far!

theheyes · 14 Aug 2010 at 11:22

Truecrypt + good Windows password for when you want to walk away and lock the screen.

In terms of speed, there is a performance hit but probably not as bad as you imagine. It's hard to arrive at an exact figure but if you have a modern computer - maybe 5%? As always there is a trade off but in this case I think it's worth it.