helping you stay protected in the digital age

Working on a problem I discovered. When I have the Intel Turbo Memory installed (flash cache module) Truecrypt won’t encrypt the whole disk nor will encrypt the system partition. Disabling the flash cache module in the BIOS seems to fix the problem but I haven’t dove more into it and I’ll post when I find more info. Truecrypt reported that I was using a third-party chipset and I would have to uninstall the third-party chipset software to encrypt the hard drive (though no third party chipset software was installed, just the intel turbo memory).

Update: I played around with Truecrypt and the Intel Turbo Memory aka Flash Cache Module aka Intel Ready Boost Module and discovered some things. I recently installed Windows 7 to take advantage of some enhanced hardware built into my laptop (well, added by me).

The problem I ran into was when I attempted to use Truecrypt to encrypt my entire hard disk. I was being told by Truecrypt that it couldn’t encrypt the entire disk due to an I/O error caused by a defect of the hard disk. I literally just purchased this hard drive (Seagate Momentus ST9500420ASG) so I doubted that it was a defect of the hard disk. Just in case I ran chkdsk /f /r and, guess what, the partition checked out clean (granted all I checked was the partition, not the entire drive). Truecrypt then told me that it was an I/O error and an error caused by custom chipset drivers. Custom meaning stock Intel chipset drivers because that is all I installed (this is a brand new Windows 7 install mind you).

I thought maybe it was the Seagate “G-Force” sensor in the hard drive that was causing the errors that Truecrypt was reporting but I read that other people using this hard drive weren’t having any issues with Truecrypt.

Poking around in Windows 7 some more I came across “NV Cache” and “Hybrid Hard Disk”. Disabling those didn’t seem to fix the problem but I thought about the Intel Turbo Memory mini-pci card that I had added to my laptop. I went into the BIOS (revision A17 if you’re wondering) and turned off the Flash Cache Module. Booted up into Windows 7 and made sure it was off (checked in the device manager) and attempted to use Truecrypt to encrypt the whole disk… one more time. This time, it worked! I’m not sure what about the Flash Cache Module was keeping Truecrypt from working but this was it.

I encrypted the whole disk and, 12 hours later (yeah, I’m that paranoid), came back to a completed encrypted disk. I rebooted, started up in the BIOS, and re-enabled the flash cache module. Booted up into windows and everything seems to be working without issue.

One thing I did notice was that in the Performance Monitor the Windows Ready Boost/Flash Cache showed no available space. I’m not relying on the Intel Turbo Memory too much, it is more of a toy, so I formatted it in Disk Manager and set it to “Dedicate entire device to Ready Boost”.

Went back to performance monitor and now I have 511mb of available cache space for Ready Boost and an entire hard disk encrypted with Truecrypt. Good to go.

~ by johndball on February 19, 2010.