How do I encrypt an external (USB) hard drive in 14.04?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and I have a Western Digital external hard drive (Passport Ultra) mounted. I want to encrypt the entire drive. WD has Windows and Mac utilities available, but nothing for Linux/Ubuntu.

I have consulted Ubuntu help and found one article (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystemsOnRemovableStorage), but the material appears to be seriously dated. The article recommends installing a utility, Gnome-disk-utility, but my attempt to do so failed owing to dependency problems which I am not sufficiently knowledgeable even to attempt to resolve. The help article also gives a routine for encrypting entirely from the terminal, but I am hesitant to try because apparently it hasn't been tested since version 10.04.

So my questions are:

1. is there a Gnome-disk-utility package available for 14.04 (and if so, where); or failing that

2. is the command line routine reliable for 14.04?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Solution

You can easily install the Disk Utility in 14.04:

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

If this doesn't work, please post the exact error messages that you get.

To then open Disk Utility check this question:

• How do I open Disk Utility in Xfce?

It allows to very easily create encrypted partitions:

• How to encrypt external devices?

Comments

[Panther]

Encryption for use on Ubuntu only or cross platform? For ubuntu only, I suggest LUKS. The commands on the wiki page are still valid. For a graphical tool / dependencies see the other link I gave you.

[karim]

I've encountered this same issue. The GUI Disk-Utility has been overhauled rather drastically and no longer has the encryption options listed by that documentation (or most other documentation for this task that I can find).

[karim]

@bodhi.zazen This isn't a duplicate of the issue you link; the disk utility is now called "disks" on 14.04 and doesn't have the options described in the thread the user links.

[Panther]

@cboettig - the link I gave is to resolve unmet dependencies. although the GUI may not give these options, the commands work.

[karim]

@bodhi.zazen Right, I just meant to point out that this is not a duplicate of a dependency problem because the user has already installed the software, the said software just has a different name.

[Panther]

@cboettig - the OP stated "my attempt to do so failed owing to dependency problems which I am not sufficiently knowledgeable even to attempt to resolve." if it is not a dependency problem s/he should update the question.