I recently wanted to buy a new Harddisk. I did not want one that uses "shingled magnetic recording" because thats awfully slow. Instead I looked for a "perpendicular magnetic recording" HDD, but I learned thats not a thing anymore. Instead I could buy CMR disks.
For those getting here by google looking for a quick answer: CMR=PMR.
For those who want to know why PMR was renamed to CMR and why SMR disks are slow:
read on
TrueCrypt is pretty dead. We need some options here, and as far as I can see, there are only two three:
* CipherShed. Currently a vanilla fork of TrueCrypt.
* VeraCrypt. A fork of TrueCrypt with some fixes and improvements.
* Keep using TrueCrypt.
Neither of the two alternatives has had an official source code audit or anything. They are both open source. I will give a quick summary of the facts on both forks, concluding that I have no clue and will probably flip a coin roll a D3. Whether these facts are pro or con is up to your discretion.
CipherShed Facts
- They are on github.
- They seem dedicated. Meaning, the information on their homepage sounds like they thought this through.
- Not much has happened yet, they only forked TrueCrypt.
- There is only a pre-alpha version available, which I won't touch.
- They do not have any licensing information at all.
- Longterm Plans are a bit fuzzy, according to their wiki they want to
- Secure the code through audits, simplification, and a secure architecture.
- Migrate towards a OSI-approved licensed codebase
- Work closely with existing efforts such as OpenCryptoAuditProject, LUKS, GELI, and tc-play.
VeraCrypt Facts
- According to the author in this thread, VeraCrypt was first published on June 22nd 2013, so it has already aged a bit.
- In fixing some of the security flaws in TC, they break backwards-compatibility. There is a conversion tool available.
- They are on CodePlex and the software is under Microsoft Public License.
- Binaries are available for download, cross-platform.
- Most relevant longterm plan is the ability to encrypt Windows system partitions/drives on UEFI-based computers (GPT).
So. If you have additional information, let me know in comments or by eMail. I am rattled beyond my usual level of confusion as to what I should do. Currently, I will probably give the VeraCrypt binaries a test ride on some machine.