Portable TrueCrypt Changelog

What's new in Portable TrueCrypt 7.1

Sep 2, 2011
  • New features:
  • Full compatibility with 64-bit and 32-bit Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

New in Portable TrueCrypt 7.0a (Sep 6, 2010)

  • Improvements:
  • Workaround for a bug in some custom (non-Microsoft) drivers for storage device controllers that caused a system crash when initiating hibernation on TrueCrypt-encrypted operating systems.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Minor bug fixes

New in Portable TrueCrypt 7.0 (Jul 21, 2010)

  • New features:
  • Hardware-accelerated AES (for more information, see the chapter Hardware Acceleration). Note: If you want to disable hardware acceleration, select Settings > Performance and disable the option 'Accelerate AES encryption/decryption by using the AES instructions of the processor'.
  • A volume can now be configured to be automatically mounted whenever its host device gets connected to the computer (provided that the correct password and/or keyfiles are supplied). Note: For example, if you have a TrueCrypt container on a USB flash drive and you want to configure TrueCrypt to mount it automatically whenever you insert the USB flash drive into the USB port, follow these steps: 1. Mount the volume. 2. Right-click the mounted volume in the drive list in the main TrueCrypt window and select 'Add to Favorites'. 3. The Favorites Organizer window should appear. In it, enable the option 'Mount selected volume when its host device gets connected' and click OK. Also note that TrueCrypt will not prompt you for a password if you have enabled caching of the pre-boot authentication password (Settings > 'System Encryption') and the volume uses the same password as the system partition/drive. The same applies to cached non-system volume passwords.
  • Partition/device-hosted volumes can now be created on drives that use a sector size of 4096, 2048, or 1024 bytes. Note: Previously only file-hosted volumes were supported on such drives.
  • Favorite Volumes Organizer (Favorites > 'Organize Favorite Volumes' or 'Organize System Favorite Volumes'), which allows you to set various options for each favorite volume. For example, any of them can be mounted upon logon, as read-only or removable medium, can be assigned a special label (which is shown within the user interface instead of the volume path), excluded from hotkey mount, etc. The order in which favorite volumes are displayed in the Favorites Organizer window can be changed and it is the order in which the volumes are mounted (e.g. when Windows starts or by pressing the 'Mount Favorite Volumes' hotkey). For more information, see the chapters Favorite Volumes and System Favorite Volumes.
  • The Favorites menu now contains a list of your non-system favorite volumes. When you select a volume from the list, you are asked for its password (and/or keyfiles) (unless it is cached) and if it is correct, the volume is mounted.
  • Security improvements:
  • In response to our public complaint regarding the missing API for encryption of Windows hibernation files, Microsoft began providing a public API for encryption of hibernation files on Windows Vista and later versions of Windows (for more information, see the section TrueCrypt 5.1a in this version history). Starting with this version 7.0, TrueCrypt uses this API to encrypt hibernation and crash dump files in a safe documented way. Note: As Windows XP and Windows 2003 do not provide any API for encryption of hibernation files, TrueCrypt has to modify undocumented components of Windows XP/2003 in order to allow users to encrypt hibernation files. Therefore, TrueCrypt cannot guarantee that Windows XP/2003 hibernation files will always be encrypted. Therefore, if you use Windows XP/2003 and want the hibernation file to be safely encrypted, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to Windows Vista or later and to TrueCrypt 7.0 or later. For more information, see the section Hibernation File.
  • Improvements:
  • Many minor improvements.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Minor bug fixes.
  • Removed features:
  • TrueCrypt no longer supports device-hosted volumes located on floppy disks. Note: You can still create file-hosted TrueCrypt volumes on floppy disks.

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.3a (Nov 24, 2009)

  • Improvements and bug fixes:
  • Minor improvements and bug fixes

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.3 (Oct 22, 2009)

  • New features:
  • Full support for Windows 7.
  • Full support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
  • The ability to configure selected volumes as 'system favorite volumes'. This is useful, for example, when you have volumes that need to be mounted before system and application services start and before users start logging on. It is also useful when there are network-shared folders located on a TrueCrypt volume and you need to ensure that the network shares will be restored by the system each time it is restarted. For more information, see the chapter 'Main Program Window', section 'Program Menu', subsection 'Volumes -> Save Currently Mounted Volumes as Favorite' in the documentation. (Windows)
  • Improvements and bug fixes:
  • 'Favorite' volumes residing within partitions or dynamic volumes will no longer be affected by changes in disk device numbers, which may occur, e.g., when a drive is removed or added. (Windows)
  • Many other minor improvements and bug fixes. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.2a (Jun 15, 2009)

  • Improvements and bug fixes:
  • Improved file container creation speed on systems having issues with write block sizes greater than 64 KB. (Windows)
  • The 'Device not ready' error will no longer occur when the process of decryption of a system partition/drive is finished. (Windows)
  • Other minor improvements and bug fixes. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.2 (Jun 12, 2009)

  • New features:
  • The I/O pipeline now uses read-ahead buffering, which improves read performance especially on solid-state drives, typically by 30-50%. (Windows)
  • Improvements, bug fixes, and security enhancements:
  • The boot loader now supports motherboards with BIOSes that reserve large amounts of base memory (typically for onboard RAID controllers). Note: In order to be able to take advantage of this improvement under Windows Vista, you will have to install Service Pack 1 or higher first. Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista resolved an issue causing a shortage of free base memory during system boot. (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)
  • Mounting using the 'Auto-Mount Devices' feature may take significantly less time as partitions containing unencrypted filesystems are now skipped. (Windows)
  • When volumes that are mounted as read-only or removable are saved as favorite volumes, they are mounted as read-only and/or removable when 'Mount Favorite Volumes' is used.
  • When a multiple-pass wipe algorithm is selected when performing in-place encryption of a non-system volume, the header areas will be wiped before the encrypted headers are written to the disk. Note: On an existing volume, you can perform such an operation by changing its password and/or keyfiles. (Windows Vista/2008)
  • Many other minor improvements, bug fixes and security enhancements. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.1a (Dec 28, 2008)

  • Minor improvements, bug fixes, and security enhancements.
  • Note: If you are using an older version of TrueCrypt, it is highly recommended that you upgrade to the latest stable version.

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.1 (Nov 10, 2008)

  • New features:
  • Ability to encrypt a non-system partition without losing existing data on the partition. (Windows Vista/2008)
  • Note: To encrypt a non-system partition in place, click 'Create Volume' > 'Encrypt a non-system partition' > 'Standard volume' > 'Select Device' > 'Encrypt partition in place' and then follow the instructions in the wizard. Please note that this is not supported on Windows XP/2000/2003 as these versions of Windows do not natively support shrinking of a filesystem (the filesystem needs to be shrunk to make space for the volume header and backup header).
  • Support for security tokens and smart cards (for more information, see section Security Tokens and Smart Cards in chapter Keyfiles).
  • The TrueCrypt boot loader can be prevented from displaying any texts (by selecting Settings > System Encryption and enabling the option 'Do not show any texts in the pre-boot authentication screen').
  • The TrueCrypt boot loader can now display a custom message (select Settings > System Encryption and enter the message in the corresponding field) either without any other texts or along with the standard TrueCrypt boot loader texts.
  • Pre-boot authentication passwords can now be cached in the driver memory, which allows them to be used for mounting of non-system TrueCrypt volumes (select Settings > System Encryption and enable the option 'Cache pre-boot authentication password').
  • Linux and Mac OS X versions: The ability to mount a Windows system partition encrypted by TrueCrypt and to mount a partition located on a Windows system drive that is fully encrypted by a Windows version of TrueCrypt.
  • Improvements:
  • Protection against memory corruption caused by certain inappropriately designed versions of some BIOSes, which prevented the pre-boot authentication component from working properly.
  • (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)
  • During the process of creation of a hidden operating system, TrueCrypt now securely erases the entire content of the partition where the original system resides after the hidden system has been created. The user is then prompted to install a new system on the partition and encrypt it using TrueCrypt (thus the decoy system is created).
  • Note: Although we are not aware of any security issues (connected with decoy systems) affecting the previous versions of TrueCrypt, we have implemented this change to prevent any such undiscovered security issues (if there are any). Otherwise, in the future, a vulnerability might be discovered that could allow an attacker to find out that the TrueCrypt wizard was used in the hidden-system-creation mode (which might indicate the existence of a hidden operating system on the computer) e.g. by analyzing files, such as log files created by Windows, on the partition where the original system (of which the hidden system is a clone) resides. In addition, due to this change, it is no longer required that the paging file is disabled and hibernation prevented when creating a hidden operating system.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Many minor bug fixes and security improvements. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

New in Portable TrueCrypt 6.0a (Jul 9, 2008)

  • On systems where certain inappropriately designed chipset drivers were installed, it was impossible to encrypt the system partition/drive. This will no longer occur.
  • (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)
  • Other minor bug fixes. (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)