Mounting LUKS / dm-crypt Partitions in Microsoft Windows

January 29, 2009 in Geek, Information Security | 6 comments

I blogged earlier detailing my experiences in installation of Fedora Core 10, encrypted internal hard disk drives, and external removable hard disk drives. For some, it’s also necessary to be able to access encrypted removable drives in other Operating Systems, such as Microsoft Windows.

Under Microsoft Windows XP, you will need two pieces of software. A filesystem driver, such as Ext2fsd, and an application capable of opening and closing the LUKS container, such as FreeOTFE. Simply install both pieces of software, and ensure that both are executing. Ext2fsd seems to run at start-up by default, but FreeOTFE does not.

Plug in your LUKS/dm-crypt encrypted USB drive, and open up FreeOTFE. It’s quite tempting to jump straight for the big ‘Mount partition’ button, but instead you will need to go to the File menu, Linux volume, and Mount partition…

Mount Linux Partition Option in FreeOTFE

You will then be prompted to select the partition. Once you do, you’ll receive a prompt for the passphrase, and some additional mounting options. Input your LUKS passphrase for this parition, and change the Mount as option to Removable disk.

Input Passphrase in FreeOTFE

Click OK, and that’s it. The partition should mount correctly. When it comes to unplugging the device, remember to unmount first from FreeOTFE, and then go through the normal hardware disconnection procedure.

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  1. Adrian Lang’s avatar

    Adrian Lang on August 28, 2009 at 10:48 am

    Should this work the same way with non-removable hard disks?

  2. yibble’s avatar

    yibble on September 1, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Yes, it would be the same (if not very similar) process.

  3. kynan’s avatar

    kynan on May 18, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    Is there any trick to it or a step missing? When mounting the partition with FreeOTFE it gets mapped to a drive letter, so it cannot be remapped with Ext2fsd, neither accessed from Windows. What am I missing?

  4. yibble’s avatar

    yibble on May 18, 2010 at 11:51 pm

    Hi Kynan, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on there. It’s automated for me. Best to check that the Ext2fsd driver/service is started prior to mounting the partition through FreeOTFE.

  5. kynan’s avatar

    kynan on May 19, 2010 at 7:20 am

    Ext2fsd should be running, under service status it says “Ext2Fsd is already started”, but when I mount the partition through FreeOTFE, it is not accessible (i.e. the suggestion is to format the partition). That is not surprising I think, how is Ext2fsd supposed to know it should mount this partition? Did you set up anything in Ext2fsd beforehand?

  6. freedumb2000’s avatar

    freedumb2000 on June 27, 2010 at 9:52 am

    Nice post. Would you mind showin the steps to be doen with Ext2fsd? For some reason the drives letter assigned by FreeOTFE does not show up within Ext2fsd.
    It only shows physical drives.
    kynan, be sure that the new virtual drive letter assigned be FreeOTFE shows up in Ext2fsd and that you are not trying to mount the encryped physical partition.