TrueCrypt is a software application that provides great on-the-fly encryption capabilities. It is an open source tool that is available free of cost for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.It creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. It can also encrypt an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive. It encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication). It also allows parallelisation and pipelining that allows data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted. Most importantly, it provides the plausible deniability feature, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password.
However, TrueCrypt is not a panacea and users are required to take additional security mechanisms to keep their date completely safe.
TrueCrypt has recently released version 7.0. Some new features have been added the chief among them are hardware-accelerated AES, support for devices that use sector sizes other than 512 bytes, ability to configure a volume to be automatically mounted whenever its host device gets connected to the computer, favorites organizer, and more.
Most of Intel's Core i5 and i7 processors support AES-NI instructions required to accelerate the AES engine. However those who don't trust Intel's implementation of AES can force Truecrypt to use its own open source AES engine, without hardware acceleration.
If you find the product useful, consider donating some amount so that the product can be further improved and continued to be available free of cost.
