Like a lot of people, I use TrueCrypt on my USB drive. Even though it's not strictly portable it works for me. For backing up my USB drive I use SyncBack which uses file dates to determine which files have changed. I assumed that every time I used the TC encrypted drive that the timestamp of the container file would change and, therefore, be backed up.
Yesterday I needed to restore my container file from the backup. It turns out that TC by default does not update the timestamp when the volume is unmounted. It's part of plausible deniability. Therefore, my backup process had not backed up the container file since I first created it.
There are 2 solutions:
- turn off the TC option (GUI and/or command line) to preserve timestamps
or
- force your backup program to always backup the container file
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I use TrueCrypt on my USB drive -- been trying to convince ppl how much it improves the performance of Firefox Portable, since it runs in a RAM disk, instead of typically s-l-o-w thumbdrives, et cetera.
Anyway, yes, you need to practice SAFE Portable App-ing at ALL times, and backing everything up is paramount!!!
Personally, I use a MS utility called 'Robocopy'. I run it in a batch file before unmounting the RAM disk. Here's the command I use...
@Robocopy Z:\ \RFolder /MIR /NDL /NC /NS /XD Z:\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\Cache /XD Z:\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\Cache.Trash
[the above goes on one line, of course -- this BBS software is wrapping it]
@PAUSE
This makes a mirror image of my virtual drive (minus the the FFP cache, in case I run across a computer where I don't have admin rights, e.g. I can't mount the TrueCrypt drive.
I also backup my entire thumbdrive to my local PC about once a week using Cobian 'Black Moon'...
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