IDEA: tiny thing to help angry truecrypt users ;)

[m4rkiz]

when mountingencrypted partition with truecrypt i have to use \Device\HarddiskX\PartitionX path

but there is a known problem with windows disk numbers - they are not always the same http://support.micro....com/kb/937251/en-us
so basically if i have three hdds there is no way to tell if partition i want to mount will be

\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1, \Device\Harddisk1\Partition1 or \Device\Harddisk2\Partition1

therefore i cant connect \device\harddisk paths to correct drive letters

what i come with so far is:

1. i can have list of disks and their serial numbers with some utils for ex. diskid32.exe http://www.winsim.com/diskid32/diskid32.html

2. to make it more clear lets do: diskid32.exe | findstr /C:"STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR" /C:"Serial Number ="

output is:

**** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 0 **** Serial Number = [S13PJ90QA46513]
**** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 1 **** Serial Number = [S13PJ9BQC04227]
**** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 2 **** Serial Number = [S13PJ1KQ600179]

or simply:

drive 0  = [S13PJ90QA4X513]
drive 1  = [S13PJ9BQC04X27]
drive 2  = [S13PJ1KQ60X179]

command to actually mount a partition is

TrueCrypt.exe /V \Device\Harddisk S13PJ90QA4X513 \Partition1 /L D

where
/V is volume
/L is drive letter

but instead of \Device\Harddisk S13PJ90QA4X513 \Partition1

\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 should be used

so, so far at every boot i need to create list of hhds numbers & serial numbers and replace serial numbers with disk numbers in my batch file that mounts partitions
it is working for me, but it have to be some way to combine everything (diskid32, findstr, sed, my own batch) to something simpler that will work for all the people

http://forums.truecrypt.org/viewtopic.php?t=15714

[mouser]

this seems like a good idea.

can i clarify: a solution to your problem would be a commandline tool that took as input a serial number and returned the hard drive number, is that right?

[m4rkiz]

this seems like a good idea.

can i clarify: a solution to your problem would be a commandline tool that took as input a serial number and returned the hard drive number, is that right?

-mouser (April 21, 2009, 12:04 PM)

exactly, making some batch file with mount commands would be really easy with something like that

[mouser]

seems like something easy to do, i'll bet someone codes it in the next few days.. let's see..

[m4rkiz]

to make it even more easy (for truecrypt users, not for programmers;) perfect tool would do that:

c:\tool.exe mount.bat

1. get serial numbers of all hdds in the system (linked to disk numbers)
2. make copy of mount.bat to temp_mount.bat (overwrite if exist)
3. search temp_mount.bat for disk serial numbers and replace them with disc number
4. run temp_mount.bat
5. quit

ad. 1 http://www.codeproje...cpp/DriveInfoEx.aspx

[f0dder]

Sounds like a very very nice idea - I'm a bit annoyed that I have to manually select the correct partition every time I mount my encrypted USB drive.

Instead of focusing on batch files and stuff, the tool should probably be a bit more "integrated", allowing you to list currently attached devices, set up rules for them (wanted drive letter, which partition to use), perhaps referring to a disk by a "friendly name" etc.

[Target]

apologies if I'm talking out of turn here (I don't use TrueCrypt so I'm not altogether sure I understand the issue) but do you use drive labels?

this could be a useful tag for identifying drives and partitions as they don't change

[f0dder]

Aren't drive labels stored as part of the NTFS Volume Information? That won't work when using truecrypt to encrypt the partition

[Target]

sorry, I have no idea

just seems like they could be a potential tag to identify the necessary volume(s)