Question regarding plausible deniability.

[Mick Ronald]

Hello. I have an 8 terabyte hard drive that I cannot use Veracrypt on, as it complains about its size. If I were to fill it up with random data, split it into several 2 TB partitions, and then Veracrypt with quick format one of the partitions, would it remain hidden, or would there be changes to the overall data that made the presence of Veracrypt obvious?

[Enigma2Illusion]

Hi Mick,

Can you provide more technical details about the 8 TB issue?

• OS and Version?
• VeraCrypt version?
• Make and model of drive and HDD or SSD?
• Internal or external drive?
• Format type? (NTFS, exFAT, etc)
• Are you attempting to encrypt the partition (i.e. Device\Hardrisk1\Partition1) of the entire drive with no partition (i.e. Harddisk1)?
• What is the exact error message?

[Mick Ronald]

I am running Ubuntu 22.04 and Veracrypt 1.26.7. I was attempting to encrypt a whole-drive partition. It gave me an error that recommended using a drive with 4096 bytes-per-sector for a partition larger than 2 TB.

I'm not sure how to handle cleanly wiping the HDD with this in mind, so I was thinking of secure erasing the entire drive, until it appears filled with random junk, and then spiting it into several partitions and using Veracrypt with quick format enabled to encrypt part of one.

Would quick format make the Veracrypt portion of the disk obvious, even though it has been already wiped?

[Enigma2Illusion]

When do you get the error? Is it during the VeraCrypt selection of the filesystem type?

If yes, which filesystem did you choose?

Why not recreate the partition with the larger 2048 (8TB) or 4096 (16TB) bytes-per-sector?

Would quick format make the Veracrypt portion of the disk obvious, even though it has been already wiped?

I cannot answer this question since the random patterns between the utilities may provide a clue.

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Quick feedbac:
It appears that you are encountering the limitation related to creating Outer volumes on Linux, which only supports FAT32 in UI. This restricts the volume size to 2TB when the sector size is 512 bytes (a limitation not present on Windows since we can use NTFS for Outer volume).

I would not recommend splitting the disk into several 2TB partitions, as this configuration could potentially signal to an attacker what's actually going on, thus defeating the principle of plausible deniability.

[Mick Ronald]

I see. Thank you. if it's just a problem with the UI, I'll use the command line instead.