Aug 18

Share Truecrypt volume on Windows with volume mount point

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I keep all my sensitive documents encrypted in Truecrypt volumes (don’t you?).  But I ran into a problem when I wanted to share a Truecrypt volume across my home network.  I had to setup the share every time I mounted the volume.

Then it hit me; my flaw was that I was trying to set up a share within the Truecrypt volume.  I needed to set up a share and then mount the TC volume inside that share.  But you can’t mount a Truecrypt volume to a directory.  Humm….

Enter Hardlink Shell Extension.  HSE will let you create Volume Mount Points in Windows.  That will let you “map complete local volumes onto arbitrary disk locations”.  So you can create a VMP (as a folder) and point it at the drive letter of your TC volume.  That way whenever you mount the TC volume to that drive letter, it will already be shared.

After installing the HSE, Mount your TC volume, right-click, and select “Pick Link Source”

pick-link

Now go to the drive you are going to set up your shared folder and right click.  Then select “Drop As…” and “Volume Mountpoint”.

drop-vmp

Now just share the resulting folder.

When you mount the TC volume (or any TC volume for that matter) to the drive letter you selected as your “Link Source” it will be shared.

–Zen

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9 Responses to “Share Truecrypt volume on Windows with volume mount point”

  1. ourbig Says:
    September 27th, 2009 at 9:01 am

    I think this was a very interesting post thanks for writing it!

  2. Ben Says:
    February 28th, 2010 at 1:58 pm

    Just what I was looking for. Thank you Zen
    ~Ben

  3. lazy Says:
    May 2nd, 2010 at 10:41 am

    hi, do you have any idea on how to do the opposite, i.e. restricting access the mounted volume?

    here is my situation:

    i use a truecrypt volume to store my data on USB for access on multiple machines. when i mount the volume, it becomes visible to other people on the machine. i tried to set NTFS permission, but then i need to have the files accessible from multiple machines not belonging to the same domain. any suggestion?

  4. Zen Says:
    May 3rd, 2010 at 8:16 am

    Lazy, I may need more info to try to answer your question. But if you are just trying to hide your mounted TC volume on and XP machine, the easiest way would probably be to use TweakUI. In TweakUI, you would go to My Computer and then Drives and uncheck the drive you want to hide.

    Or if you use the same drive letter to mount each time, you could then use a registry hack to hide it: http://tinyurl.com/33yzl8a

  5. Terence Lai Says:
    August 12th, 2010 at 11:21 pm

    It’s really a great post that total resolve my problem. Thanks for your contribution.

  6. Daemonizer Says:
    May 12th, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    This doesnt work for me… win 7 64, true crypt, when i try to share the resulting “mountpoint” folder win 7 tells me: “your folder cannot be shared”. Anyone know how to get past this?

    Regards,
    D

  7. Zen Says:
    May 15th, 2012 at 12:00 pm

    Daemonizer, if you try to create a mountpoint of another folder and share it, does it work?

  8. Daemonizer Says:
    May 22nd, 2012 at 7:56 pm

    Turns out my sharing in windows 7 was completely messed up. I picked up an SSD (woot) and reinstalled windows 7, and now sharing works. However after creating the True Crypt volume and mounting it, selecting “Pick Link Source” on that new drive letter, and then going to the Drop As… menu, the only options I have are:
    Symbolic Link
    Junction
    Smart Copy
    Smart Mirror
    Delorean Copy
    Symbolic Link Clone

    I tried Junction and that seemed to work fine. Thanks for the suggestions and posting this page.
    No Volume Mount Point

  9. Jeff Says:
    May 24th, 2013 at 6:45 pm

    I’m not using this for sharing, but to instead redirect a Zimbra Desktop message store to my encrypted volume. Works like a champ, thanks!!