Hello All,
I have a question regarding the Data directories of the PortableApps applications... I know that keeping the path names for everything relative is the major bonus with these applications, however, I have a situation where I would like to move the data directory to an absolute path. Is this possible?
My reasoning is this...
I have a usb key which I carry everywhere with PortableFirefox and PortableThunderbird, also I have an encrypted file which mounts as a drive when decrypted (using TrueCrypt software, which is free open-source and excellent). This file decrpyts always to the same drive letter (x:) and holds personal information. At present I can move emails to the 
by changing the 'local directory' in account settings but still there are address books and more concerningly openPGP secret keys within the data directory of the unencrypted section of the usb drive. The same occurs with PortableFirefox where Internet History, passwords and cookies all remain accesible without decrypting.
Am I Paranoid? ..probably, but it's a question worth asking.
Is there a way to solve this problem?
Thank you,
ayj
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What's the big deal? Just move the entire PFF/PTB "installation" to the encrypted volume. The apps are useless anyway without the data you intend to encrypt, so you're not losing anything by moving the entire app to the encrypted volume.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
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I could do that but I would prefer not to. If increase the size of my encrypted file to accomodate all apps then I lose space on the rest of my USB key which I need for transporting files between different os's.
Encryption doesn't typically increase the size of a file. If PTB and PFF are already on your USB key and you just move them to the encrypted volume, I don't see how you're losing any disk space. You're just shuffling things around a bit. It would be like me moving my dresser to the opposite end of the room, for instance.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
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Fair enough, I could move PortableThunderbird to my encrypted drive but just humour me... Is there a way to move just the data directory to an absolute path?
Not knowing exactly how TrueCrypt works I wonder if moving the entire PTB installation to the encrypted drive vs. just moving the data directory to a smaller encrypted drive affects the total amount of reads/writes to the USB drive.
I guess my basic questions with an encrypted drive like TrueCrypt are:
- after a drive is first opened and a file is read, is TC smart enough to find just the file and read just that portion of the encrypted drive or does it have to read the entire encrypted drive first?
- similarly, if just 1 file in an encrypted drive changes is just that new, encrypted file written or does the whole drive have to be re-written?
If the answer to both is the latter, then moving just the data folder (and, similarly, just unique data for non-John Haller apps) to a smaller encrypted drive would be preferable. It'd be faster and less total use of the USB drive.
Somehow I doubt the entire volume file would be rewritten every time a file changes. What if someone encrypted their whole 2GB disk? Can you imagine how long it would take to rewrite the entire 2GB volume every time one file changed? Not only is that not practical, it just doesn't make sense.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
My previous, limited experience with TrueCrypt was on a USB 2.0 1G hard drive which was definitely no speed demon. Anything I tried with TC seemed to bog things down quite a bit.
I just tried TC again on a 1G Privacy Drive flash drive I happen to have on hand. I created a 250M TC drive on there and copied a 1k file from the USB drive into the TC drive. Editing and saving each copy of the file a number of times showed no difference in opening and saving/closing times.
I then copied my PTB folder into the encrypted partition. Starting the unencrypted PTB took 26 seconds the first time (till the window displayed), 14 seconds the second time and 10 seconds the third time. The encrypted PTB took 24, 10 and 6 seconds. So the TC PTB was always faster to start.
Closing down on the other hand was different. Unencrypted PTB always took about 10 seconds until the USB drive light stopped flashing. Encrypted PTB always took 18-20 seconds until the light stopped flashing.
So, at least for this flash drive, it appears that:
- reading from a TC drive is faster
- writing to a TC drive may or may not be significantly slower
Unless we're talking about VRAM, writing to any medium is almost always slower than reading. This could explain why writing to the TC drive is slower. Any overhead imposed by TrueCrypt, even if minimal, will affect the read/write speed, especially on a slower drive.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
so it appears, at least with PTB, that TC itself is somehow doubling the write time. I did notice that the drive light would flicker and stop 3 or 4 times before done writing the TC PTB. With the non-TC PTB it was one continuous flicker until done.
This is on XP SP1, 3 GHz, 1G RAM system so I don't think the system is the holdup.
TrueCrypt almost certainly imposes some overhead, which I already stated in my last post. In order for it to be able to know where in the volume a specific file is stored, it has to have headers in the volume file, similar in purpose to the FAT/MFT in a disk file system. Having to update those headers at each write will tack on write time, but not nearly as much as rewriting the entire volume every time a file changes.
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fatcerberus@yahoo.com [aim: fatcerberus]
I have no witty remarks or quotes to share at the moment.
Hi.
Is there an alternative to TrueCrypt that does not require administrative privaleges? At Uni I obviously don't have them.