Encrypting hard disk without wiping

catnap · 2019-06-23 11:45:10

Is there a way to encrypt a hard disk that already has content without first erasing the content with a wipe instruction? I think one could, at least in principle, perform a xor instruction over all bytes in the hard disk so that the bytes that the original data is xored with are generated from a finite encryption key but look completely random to an observer that has no knowledge of the key. Maybe this scheme is difficult to implement. But I wonder if there are programs that would do something similar. This would make it quicker to encrypt data that is on a disk already because it would save the extra step of uploading the data to another disk before preparing the original disk for encryption.

graysky · 2019-06-23 12:11:28

I think you can just partition and setup luks without the secure wipe but it depends on what you want to achieve with your setup.

frostschutz · 2019-06-23 12:23:43

xor-ing would be slower than outright overwriting (you'd have to read first...)

there is cryptsetup-reencrypt to encrypt on the fly in place (with some risk of data loss, inherent to all in-place operations - make a backup)

sabroad · 2019-06-24 10:13:20

Some SSDs are always encrypted- for these you just need to set a passphrase (to lock/unlock the DEK encryption key).
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Se … ing_Drives

Arch Linux

#1 2019-06-23 11:45:10

Encrypting hard disk without wiping

#2 2019-06-23 12:11:28

Re: Encrypting hard disk without wiping

#3 2019-06-23 12:23:43

Re: Encrypting hard disk without wiping

#4 2019-06-24 10:13:20

Re: Encrypting hard disk without wiping

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