I was asked what makes Private Disk better than the hardware-based encryption solution offered by another company. The name of the other solution will not mentioned, because it is not relevant - the arguments are valid in either case.
The discussion is about Private Disk vs. a hardware based encryption solution that is built into a 4 GB USB disk.
Note that some of the points were taken out of context, so they may sound a bit weird (us = Dekart, them = "the other company").
Other significant things, Private Disk is better because:
From the points above, the ones that matter the most to me (as an end user) are: Disk Firewall, and the ability to create encrypted disks of very large sizes (it will take a long time until USB flash disks are of at least 100 GB in size, and work as fast as a hard disk) - this gives me the chance to use encryption for serious activities (storing my mail archive on it, or a database, or the company's CVS repository, etc). Of course, people are different, so your mileage may vary.
Sometimes things go wrong, Windows crashes with a blue screen of death (also known as a BSoD), resetting the computer.
The blue screen contains some information about the cause of the error, often that information can help you solve the problem almost immediately. However, most systems are configured to restart automatically when a blue screen occurs, thus there is not enough time to actually read the text on the blue screen.
You're missing a great deal of data - the name of the faulty driver, the code of the error itself, and some addresses which might be useful later.
To prevent that from happening, Windows can be configured not to restart the system automatically when such a crash occurs. This gives you enough time to analyze the data on the blue screen and figure out whether something can be done about it.
To do that:
From now on, you'll have plenty of time to enjoy the view of the blue screen, it will be displayed until you press the reset button (laptop owners beware: if you don't have a reset button, you'll have to turn the system off, then turn it back on).
Basic troubleshooting steps
Minidump - what do I do with it?
By default Windows will create a minidump, and store it to %windir%\minidump. The minidump contains information about the state of the system before the crash; these data can be used to understand what caused the error, and how to fix it (once you find the offending driver, it's a good idea to contact the authors of that module and give them the minidump as well).
Note that interpreting a minidump is not easy if you are not an experienced developer. You are more likely to have a positive result if you try the tips described above. If nothing helps, get hold of the created minidump and send it to someone who knows what to do with it.
If you want to give it a try yourself, use Microsoft's Debugging tools for Windows. Once you run the debugger, go to File\Open crash dump, and then you're on your own.
How to enable minidumps
Some may choose to disable the creation of minidumps (to save space perhaps?), but they are very important when troubleshooting a problem. To enable the minidumps:
Happy troubleshooting!
How can people be assured 100% that you don’t use all those accounts and passwords?
Couldn’t there be a hidden program that runs secretly to send all that information to a remote capture system?
You can be 110% sure that none of your credentials are sent to us, you can verify that yourself.
Password Carrier never establishes any network connections, so your data cannot be sent anywhere by our program. The only exception is if you have update checks enabled; in that case, the program will connect to dekart.com and retrieve a small text file, which contains information about the new versions, if they are available.
You can disable the automatic update checker, and in that case Password Carrier will be completely isolated from the Internet.
If you have updates enabled, you can use a network sniffer (such as Wireshark), to see which data are actually sent/received by the program, and make sure that you are indeed dealing with a small text file which contains the number of the latest version.
Further, you can examine the program with various tools in order to monitor Password Carrier's file-system behaviour. If you do that, you will notice that Password Carrier does not start other processes which could perform network transfers; nor it writes sensitive data to obscure locations in the file system.
The drawing below shows that:

The time has come, Private Disk 2.10 is now officially released. Some of the changes were already commented in the release notes of an earlier beta version of PD (those features are Disk Firewall's training mode, trusted program authenticity verification).

One of the most important things is compatibility with Windows Vista systems of all flavours that exist out there. Private Disk is now shipped with digitally signed drivers, so if you have a 64-bit Vista platform - you can use PD on it. This makes Private Disk yet again compatible with every version of Windows (starting with Windows 95).
There is also a new icon, which looks good whether you're looking at a zoomed in version, or at a tiny icon in a "list view".
Run Private Disk as a service

This is a very handy option, it used to be a part of the older 1.x versions of Private Disk Multifactor. Once this is enabled, you can run Private Disk, mount the image, then log off - the virtual drives will still be mounted, allowing other logged on users to access them (including those who access them from the network, if they are shared).
The idea is that you can mount the disk and restrict others from changing its settings (ex: alter the white-list, or change the disk's properties, etc). As an administrator, you can start the server and mount the disk, then share it; from that point on end-users can connect to the server and use what they are allowed, without being able to do (break) anything. This feature will help you offer users only as much power as they need to get their job done.
PD File Move - the secure data migration utility

This is the newest addition to Private Disk's arsenal, and it was not a part of any of the beta versions that were made public prior to the release (although the utility itself could be downloaded from the site, if you explored it thoroughly). It is designed to find a group of wanted files in a certain location, create an encrypted disk of the right size, move them to the protected storage vault, and then wipe the originals, so that the files cannot be recovered.
This is a typical screenshot of PD File Move

What can it do?
We decided not to bring these features into Private Disk itself, and instead have a separate utility to do the job. Private Disk continues to be extremely lightweight (using about 2.5 MB of RAM when disks are mounted), and PD File Move will not get in your way while you use Private Disk.
We are against bloatware, so you can be sure that Private Disk will continue to be a fast and solid tool, and it will never turn into a performance hog.
Here comes the changelog of the final version:
+ added XP-style and Vista-style icons
+ allows to run Private Disk software as a system service
+ added Disk Firewall Program integrity verification feature
+ allows to disable/enable Disk Firewall Program integrity verification
+ added Disk Firewall Traning Mode feature
+ allows to disable/enable Disk Firewall Traning Mode
+ compatibility with Windows Vista
+ compatibility with Windows Vista x64
+ the encryption password can be changed when the disk is mounted
+ allows to create a backup copy of a disk's encryption key automatically
+ optimized disk creation speeds when "fill disk with random data" is enabled
- fixed bug with occasional blue screen errors if Windows Defender is installed
- fixed bug with autorun.inf on USB-drives
Enjoy using the software!
If you're monitoring the pulse of the IT world, you probably stumbled upon this story:
ElcomSoft has discovered and filed for a US patent on a breakthrough technology that will decrease the time that it takes to perform password recovery by a factor of up to 25. ElcomSoft has harnessed the combined power of a PC's Central Processing Unit and its video card's Graphics Processing Unit. The resulting hardware/software powerhouse will allow cryptology professionals to build affordable PCs that will work like supercomputers when recovering lost passwords.
Now, let me translate that into plain English - they can use the computer's video card to speed up the process of brute-forcing a password. Modern computers have powerful video cards, and it is a pity to let them do nothing while the CPU is working hard.
The part which I find funny is "discovered a breakthrough technology". Was it hidden somewhere in the snows of Siberia, or in the sands of Sahara? ... waiting for hundreds of years for someone to come and discover it... How about "develop" or "invent"?
If I ignore that and only consider the serious stuff, there are several things that I have to say:
So, if that story made you a bit worried of your privacy, you can relax now. Either of these tips will help you out:
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