Should You Encrypt Entire Drive, Or Just Group Of Files – Pros And Cons

What is “encryption?” Several times you have heard about the word, and particularly while shopping online. Do you exactly know what it is in exact? Here’s a short briefing about it.

In basic terms it is a method of protecting data from people to whom you don’t to see those like details of credit card while purchasing a product from Amazon.

The computer encrypts the credit card information to prevent it being stolen by anyone while being transferred.

Similarly you can also encrypt a file stored in your computer by encrypting it. No one will henceforth open it without submitting a valid password.

The password encryption process is required for everything from keeping your cloud storage safe to securing your email and from sending sensitive information to hiding entire operating system.

Encryption is something very similar to the decoder rings that you have played in your younger days. A secret cipher was used to encode a message and the same cipher was required too by the reader to open the message. Others may just see gibberish.

However, the encryption in computer system if more complex than the secret cipher with several types like some are more secure and takes longer time to decode.

Do I Need To Encrypt My Files

A big YES of course and things can be stolen if it is not even if you don’t share your computer. A person just needs few minutes to retrieve anything required by sitting in front of the keyboard. Here, a simple login password too don’t work and don’t protect your data. So, encryption is necessary but you need to know the choices whether to encrypt just the important stuff or the entire drive. It is to note both has pros and cons.

– Simply just encrypting group of files may be easy for someone to access your computer and break into the non-encrypted files. The person may also view some of the encrypted files and access your browser. A malware can easily be installed in your computer.

– If you encrypt entire drive it will be almost impossible for anyone to access data but in the case of corruption of drive you may not be able to retrieve those too.

Unless you have a very sensitive data, it is never suggested to encrypt the entire drive. It may be much problematic to you. If really you need to encrypt entire drive, do keep everything backed up safely before taking the step.