Linux - Encrypt an External USB Drive (with dm-crypt and LUKS)
Date - February 10, 2011

Note - dm-crypt with LUKS leaves an identifiable header on the partition.

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1. Urandom the drive and then fdisk it. Example assumes /dev/sdc is external disk.

	dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
	fdisk /dev/sdc

2. Initialize the encrypted LUKS partition and set the initial key.

	cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdc1

3. Open the encrypted LUKS partition and map it to /dev/mapper/stick
	
	cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdc1 stick

4. Create a file system on the encrypted LUKS partition
	
	mkfs.ext3 -j /dev/mapper/stick

5. Mount the encrypted LUKS partition

	mkdir /mnt/stick
	mount /dev/mapper/stick /mnt/stick

6. Umount and close the encrypted LUKS partition
	
	umount /dev/mapper/stick
	cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/stick 

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For day to day use

To Mount

	cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdc1 stick && mount /dev/mapper/stick /mnt/stick

To Unmount

	cd ~ && umount /dev/mapper/stick && cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/stick

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Copyright 2011 '16 Systems'. All rights reserved.

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