We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.

This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.

📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
The Forum now has a brand new text editor, adding a bunch of handy features to use when creating posts. Read more in our how-to guide

Peeps using Truecrypt & making backups - you may not be backing the latest file

I have a Truecrypt container file and I run Second Copy as a backup solution. It is set to archive the last 5 versions of a file, but I noticed that this was not happening with my Truecrypt container. This problem will happen on any backup software which uses the timestamps of files to know if they have been changed.

By default, when you modify files in a Truecrypt container, it does not change the timestamp of the container file.This is to enhance what truecrypt calls "Plausible Deniability" where someone looking at the files on your system would not identify the container by the modify date.

A side-affect of this is that backup software does not know the file has changed and so will not back it up as the latest copy.

A workaround for this is to change the Truecrypt settings so it does not preserve the timestamps. This is done by:

Settings > Preferences > (Windows) > Preserve timestamps of file containers

Now when you change the contents of the container, the timestamp of the container file will be changed and the backup software will know it has changed.

This will probably affect other people if you are backing up in a similar way. If you think it affects you - try mounting your backup container to see what version it is.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 353.9K Banking & Borrowing
  • 254.3K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 455.2K Spending & Discounts
  • 247K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 603.6K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 178.3K Life & Family
  • 261.1K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.7K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.