3

I have a USB stick which has no drive letter assigned because its only partition is encrypted with VeraCrypt. Before removing the stick from my computer physically, of course I first dismount the volume in VeraCrypt. Now since the device has no drive letter assigned, there is no entry for it in the removable media list that pops up when clicking the corresponding tray icon. However, you can select "Open Devices and Printers", select the device there and remove it. I have two questions:

  1. Do I need to remove it this way after having dismounted it in VeraCrypt? I need to make as certain as possible that this device does not have incomplete data written to it or becomes otherwise corrupted. Therefore, so far I have always removed it via "Devices and Printers" before actually pulling it out of the slot.

  2. To remove the stick via "Devices and Printers", administrative privileges are required. Is there a way around this other than giving the device a drive letter? I would like to be able to do this without elevation, but I also do not want to give the drive a letter because Windows becomes eerily keen on formatting any drive that doesn't look familiar.

Jesko Hüttenhain
  • 260
  • 2
  • 10
  • 1
    If you dismount the volume, there is no data in the cache waiting to be written to it, which means its already safe to disconnect from the PC. In other words the minute you unmounted the drive was when it was safely ejected. – Ramhound Apr 19 '16 at 21:54
  • Doesnt win10 have a "Safely remove hardware and eject media" in the notifications (or hidden notifications) ? Why would that need a letter? letters are assigned to partitions, yet here in win7 it can flush the cache on the whole device , or the lettered item? If there is no entry item in that specific list, then there is no item with an outstanding cache to flush. – Psycogeek Apr 19 '16 at 22:23
  • @Psycogeek: That is the removable media list I refer to, and I do not know *why* drives without drive letter posess no entry. I also suspect that you are both right and I don't have to remove it after dismounting it in VeraCrypt. However, I am not sure about this because after all, Windows could still buffer some writes that VeraCrypt issued onto the *device* itself, i.e. encrypted data still pending to be written. Is there any reference that says it doesn't? – Jesko Hüttenhain Apr 20 '16 at 05:42
  • And I can see where your worried , a damaged encrypted anything would be bad, even if it is stuff surrounding an encryption container. It is only about unfinished writes as the damage, you have unmounted the container, is there anything after that, that does or could get written to? – Psycogeek Apr 20 '16 at 14:14
  • @Psycogeek: Well, this is my question. I don't know if there is a possibility of data still being written. – Jesko Hüttenhain Apr 21 '16 at 10:39

0 Answers0