Arch Linux

mark_us91

Member

Registered: 2026-04-06

Posts: 1

Encrypted media

Hi

I'm trying to understand how to use my encrypted external HDD the right way.
I encrypted it for cold storage with luks by using the cryptsetup command and it works fine but I have two main questions:
1) I have two computers running identical setups using Arch with Plasma 6. On one of them I can simply stick the HDD to the USB port and click the name of it in the file manager and it just brings the popup for luks password. If the password is correct it just mounts it and I can use it.
The same disk on another computer brings KDE wallet pupup when I try to mount it with the file manager as described above and when I click cancel it just hangs and does nothing.
I can mount it with terminal by using the cryptsetup open command though.
I need to know how to make the second computer to mount the disk as on the first computer.
2) If I mount the disk as described above on the first computer do I absolutely must to run the cryptosetup close command before unmounting it or is it enough to just "safely remove" the media?

I'm dealing with encryption like that for the first time and It's very important for me to make this right so I won't run into situations later on as it's going to be used for cold storage for privacy related data.