Linux is a very secure operating system that provides a better environment to save your data. It is very hard to compromise data on Linux but when it comes to holding sensitive information, you need to encrypt the drives on Linux. There are different applications that help the users to encrypt the data. These applications include GnuPG, VeraCrypt, and various others.
Many applications allow to individually lock the drives or encrypt the entire drives. Most reliable application among all of disk encryption programs is Gnome Disk Utility, as it is very simple and reliable among all the disk encryption tools.
Encrypting Hard Disk in Linux
It is very easy to encrypt hard disks in Linux first of all, you need to install Gnome Disk Utility and then follow a few simple steps to encrypt the disks.
Installing Gnome Disk Utility
To install Gnome Disk Utility, open the Terminal by Ctrl + Shift + T or Ctrl + Alt + T hotkeys. Follow the command according to the Linux version:
Install Gnome Disk Utility on Ubuntu
sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility
Install Gnome Disk Utility on Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S gnome-disk-utility
Install Gnome Disk Utility on Debian
sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility
Install Gnome Disk Utility on OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install gnome-disk-utility
Install Gnome Disk Utility on Fedora
sudo dnf install gnome-disk-utility
Install Gnome Disk Utility on Generic Linux
This disk encryption utility is available for all the Linux releases and makes it possible for the users to easily encrypt the partitions. It provides complete support for encrypting the disks as well as locking the folders. But you need to make sure that all your data is backed up so if anything goes wrong, you can get back the data without any trouble. As the backup is also necessary because encrypting the data requires formatting the disk.
All you need is to mount the drive on Linux from the File Manager. In the devices section, open the drive you want to encrypt. Save the data to any external drive i.e. a flash drive. Now go back to the devices section and unmount it from the context menu.
Now you need to reformat to convert a simple non-encrypted drive to an encrypted drive. First, open the Gnome Disk Utility and find them from the sidebar of the application and choose the drive you want to encrypt. Choose Format Disk option from the menu.
Make sure that the partition is set to MBR and not to GPT from the Partitioning menu. Now after you are done with all the settings click on Format button to wipe the disk.
In case you need to get a separate locked partition, you need to set up dedicated encrypted Linux partition by following a few simple steps.
- Click on the + (Plus) button for creating a new partition.
- Make use of the slider to create a partition of the specific size and click Next. (Make sure that you don’t use the entire space as a new disk).
- On the new screen that appears, provide the drive label.
- Choose the type and select ‘Internal Disk for Linux Systems only’, check the ‘Password protect volume’ in case you also want to put a password on the drive and click Next.
- A new screen will appear asking for the password, provide a password you can remember. Choose the Create button to create a new encrypted partition.
- Follow the same steps again to create another encrypted drive.