The Small Business Tech Blog is getting a lot of visitors looking for TrueCrypt help. Primarily on how to burn an ISO (cd disk image) or to how to install ‘whole disk encryption’ without burning an image. If you don’t know about TrueCrypt you can find their site here: http://www.truecrypt.org/
For those wanting to install ‘whole disk encryption’ without a cd burner you can read our blog entry here: http://smallbusinesstech.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/truecrypt-whole-disk-encryption-no-cd-workaround/ for those wanting to burn a iso image please carry on reading.
For Windows users there is an easy free way to burn iso disk images and that is to use CDBurnerXP. It is a free application and runs primarily on Windows XP. However regardless of the ‘XP’ in the name earlier versions do run on Windows 98.
You will need to install CDBurnerXP before you start the TrueCrypt ‘whole disk encryption’ installation process.
To run the latest version of CDBurnerXP though you need to install Microsoft’s .NET framework if you don’t already have it. The framework will probably affect the performance of your computer, but it seems so many Windows applications now require it and you might already have it installed. You can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/NET/ You might want to try an earlier version of CDBurnerXP if you want to avoid .NET.
CDBurnerXP’s site is here: http://cdburnerxp.se/ . Once you have downloaded and installed CDBurnerXP I recommend you reboot your computer.
When you run CDBurnerXP for the first time it asks you to select a language and then it shows the window displayed above and you select ‘Burn ISO Image’.
Now an ISO image already has the correct configurations such as how to make it bootable, non-bootable etc. You don’t need to worry about that. I do recommend though that you probably burn the ISO image at a lower speed, which you can select from a drop down list.
You select the TrueCrypt iso image and then select ‘Disc at Once’, make sure you have ‘Finalize disc’ and ‘Use buffer protection’ selected also. The screenshot above doesn’t show ‘disc at once’ selected, but for a TrueCrypt iso image you won’t want to use ‘Session at Once’.
Once you have created the disc image, TrueCrypt will then be able to verify it and you can continue with the installation process.