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Expanding Raid5 and BestCrypt/TrueCrypt Array

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PMCDEV

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Hello, I am wondering if anyone has any experience in expanding a Raid array that is encrypted with either TrueCrypt or BestCrypt ?

Basically what I want to know is if it works to say, Encrypt a 3 Disk Raid 5 array with TrueCrypt or BestCrypt and then later expand the array with additional disks without loosing data. I know that BestCrypt atleast, can decrypt the whole array and then you can expand it and then reencrypt everything, this is a bit time consuming though :)
 
I'm pretty sure you have to decrypt your array before expanding
 
PMCDEV said:
Hello, I am wondering if anyone has any experience in expanding a Raid array that is encrypted with either TrueCrypt or BestCrypt ?

Basically what I want to know is if it works to say, Encrypt a 3 Disk Raid 5 array with TrueCrypt or BestCrypt and then later expand the array with additional disks without loosing data. I know that BestCrypt atleast, can decrypt the whole array and then you can expand it and then reencrypt everything, this is a bit time consuming though :)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't personally want the whole array encrypted - put a loopback file on the array, and then you can expand the array independent of the encryption.
 
For expanding you might want to look into something like LVM (on Linux) and then using a loopback device as suggested.

My setup here, sans truecrypt, is comprised of four disks whose /boot is something like 150MB /boot RAID1 with all four disks (md0), / is 4GB RAID1 over 2 disks (hdg2 and hde2), 4GB swap RAID1 (dont ask; hdk2, hdi2) and the rest is RAID5 over hd[egik]3.

The last bit is used for LVM which has volumes of various sizes mounted in places like /usr, /var, /tmp, and so on. It's easy to make a volume to act for truecrypt, although I'm not certain how truecrypt deals with expanding volumes.
 
I actually haven't encrypted a raid array yet, I was more curious to see if it was possible to do it without decrypting the whole disk array.

If I understand TrueCrypt correctly, you actually can not expand a volume file so this option is out of the question I guess, since I do want to encrypt the whole array, even after expanding it and since the volume file is fixed, then it wont work. I guess BestCrypt has something similar to TrueCrypts volume file ? do any of you know if it is possible to expand BestCrypts volume files ?.

Btw I intend to run Windows and yes, I know linux can actually do this but linux is out of the question for me.
 
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