Encrypting the complete hard disk of the computer is a good practice to keep your sensitive information safe in case of stealing or loss of your computer.
With the help of software such as TrueCrypt, encryption is an easy thing to accomplish… as long as you have a single operating system installed on your computer. For dual boot systems it’s a different story.

This is a guide on how to setup a fully encrypted dual boot system (except for a small boot partition) with windows and linux (in this case win XP + Ubuntu Karmic Koala) using a LVM encrypted partitioning scheme for linux, and truecrypt for encrypting the windows partition.

There are two possible scenarios for a encrypted dual boot system using truecrypt and LVM:

1. Use trucrypt boot loader to load the windows partition directly and press ESC to load GRUB and therefore ubuntu.

2. Use GRUB as the boot loader to chainload truecrypt boot loader and therefore load windows.

I personally prefer the first option for one reason: with the truecrypt boot loader you can display a custom message in the pre-boot authentication screen, for example “Disk Error” or “Non System Disk”, this way the computer will appear to be frozen and no text will be displayed while you type the password (even if its a wrong one).

This guide covers how to complete the first scenario. At the end you’ll find some guidelines and useful links on how to accomplish the second scenario in case you prefer the GRUB boot loader.

This guide is separated in 4 steps:

1. Install Windows

2. Install Ubuntu and setup an encrypted LVM partitioning.

3. Encrypt Windows

4. Optional steps. How to change the truecrypt bootloader to GRUB and useful tweaks.

Please follow all the steps so you don’t miss any special considerations.

Go to step 1 >>

The How to set up a fully encrypted dual boot system – with screenshots by Red Mezzanine, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.