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Veracrypt full disk encryption multi-boot Windows 10 and two Linux Distro on same SSD with some shared folders?


Never tried something like that, but this would be my preferred setup. I dislike VMWare and Virtual Box because they are slow.


Is this setup possible? And what would be the procedure to achieve this roughly?



Answer



In my opinion the downvotes to this question are pretty much unjustified as finally I easily achieved what I have asked for. First of all full drive encryption with veracrypt is possible (https://medium.com/@securitystreak/veracrypt-full-disk-drive-encryption-fde-157eacbf0b61).


Second thing is that partition encryption with multiple OSes on the same disk as well as full drive encryption with different hard drives and multiple OSes works very well. This is how to setup for the first case:




  1. You can go ahead and encrypt your Windows system partition as if it was the only OS installed on your PC. Your UEFI boot manager will get a new entry called “VeraCrypt BootLoader (DcsBoot)” or something to this extent. Your mileage may vary, but most likely it will become the default one, which means that on boot you will bypass Grub, losing access to your other OSes.




  2. Don’t worry. From Windows, download and install Hasleo EasyUEFI and change the order of boot loaders. All you need to do is move your Grub loader back above the VeraCrypt loader. If you have Ubuntu, the Grub loader is probably called “ubuntu.” I cannot vouch for other distros or non-grub loaders, but in general the idea remains the same. I recommend using EasyUEFI and noting the file path for the VeraCrypt boot loader. This will come in handy in step 4. However, it is normally also possible to change the order of boot loaders from the BIOS/UEFI setup.




  3. Now, when you reboot, you should see your old and trusty boot menu. If you don’t, you might have to boot and run Boot-Repair. Once you have the menu, you will most likely be disappointed to find out that the “Windows” entry tries to load Windows directly off the encrypted partition, fails miserably, tries to repair it, and fails miserably again. This happens because the entry is pointing to the old Windows loader, bypassing the VeraCrypt loader completely. Thankfully, this is extremely easy to fix.




  4. Reboot into Linux and modify your Grub config. You will see that the Windows entry is pointing to the Windows EFI loader (likely \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi). You should modify it to point to the VeraCrypt loader again. As reported by EasyUEFI (step 2), in my case, it is \EFI\VeraCrypt\DcsBoot.efi.




This great tutorial is by Lanky Cyril @medium.com (https://medium.com/@lankycyril/using-veracrypt-with-a-uefi-dual-boot-setup-27d1eacbf36b).


Additional information (edit):



  • Some special operations might not be possible on the shared devices due to permission problems with NTFS/exFAT and Linux (but this is rare).

  • Many app profiles can be shared accross both systems though like e.g. a Mozilla Thunderbird profile.

  • If you install Veracrypt 1.23 or higher you can update Windows 10 without any problems.

  • In my opinion it is not necessary to use Haeslo EasyUEFI (it is Shareware). Just change the order of boot loaders in your BIOS, save and you are done. In case you have problems with boot sequences, also just try to change the order in your BIOS first.


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