I'm currently on 17.10 and don't use encryption on my internal drives but have an external USB disk which is encrypted. I use it for backups.
Because I am was not sure whether I use ecryptfs
or cryptsetup
I show the steps it took to set up the external disk:
Activities → Disks → Select drive → Create Partition → Format Volume:
Enter Password (twice) → Create
When I plug in the HDD, Ubuntu prompts me to enter the passphrase and then
mounts it. It works like a charm and I'm able to write my backups to that
external disk. There are no .Private
folders and no other files besides
the one I put there (plus the lost+found
folder). For illustration I
used a 4GB stick here but the steps were the same with the actual disk.
From some comments I learned this happens to be cryptsetup
then and not
ecryptfs
.
What will happen when I upgrade to 18.04? Given 18.04 doesn't support encryption by default, I'm afraid I cannot restore my backups any longer.
Will it make a difference when I don't upgrade but do a fresh install?