First time user: Stuck on existing paritition

[VLMin]

Greetings! I am a new VeraCrypt user and am trying to encrypt an empty flash drive. Using Win 10.

I used CMD > clean to clean the drive, so in Win 10 File Manager, when I click on the drive letter, I see the message "Please insert a disk into "GEOGRAPHY" (E:)", where GEOGRAPHY is the old volume name (can be changed) and E:\ is the first available volume letter (other than A/B).

I launched VeraCrypt-x64 (portable), selected the volume label I wish to use (S:), and clicked on "Create Volume".

I selected "Encrypt a non-system partition / drive" and clicked "Next".

I selected "Standard VeraCrypt volume" and clicked "Next".

In the Volume Location screen, I clicked on "Select Device" and selected the device as follows: When I tried to select "Removable disk 8", the program displayed a somewhat long message beginning "The selected non-system drive contains partitions." Note that in the Win 10 Disk Management tool, this drive shows unallocated. I went back and selected "Device\Haarddisk8\Partition1". Now, in the Volume Location screen, this is what displays.

I don't know whether to select "Never save history", so I just click "Next".

I select the default Volume Creation Mode ("Create encrypted volume and format it").

I select AES encryption and click "Next".

And here I sit, staring into the Volume Size screen. Everything is grayed out, and the message says "Please create a logical drive for this extended partition, and then try again." I don't know what to do in order to complete this process and would appreciate help.

Thank you!

[RealTehreal]

I'm not a Windows user but it seems to me you created an extended partition without any logical drive assigned to it. Search for a how to create logical drives in Windows. As an alternative, you could post a screenshot of your partition layout. Maybe it's just a few clicks.

Greets

[Gary Marks]

@VLMin, from what I can see, you should probably go back to the beginning. It seems a bit strange that as detailed as you are when describing your procedures, you gave the briefest of all possible descriptions of how you cleaned the drive, saying merely that "I used CMD > clean to clean the drive..." If you had used DISKPART to give it a proper cleaning, you should have no leftovers at all, including your volume name "GEOGRAPHY."

Here's a good description of using DISKPART and its "CLEAN" command for cleaning any drive...
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

[VLMin]

Thank you both. Gary, you were absolutely correct, I did use DiskPart. Unfortunately, I searched for instructions about how to remove everything from a disk, assuming that VeraCrypt would take it from there. The instructions you sent continued past "clean" to the steps necessary to create and letteer the new active partition. I have now successfully created my first VeraCrypt-encrypted device/volume.

I do have two follow-up questions.

1. At the endof the creation process, VC displays a dialog that contains, in part, the following: "0133… the drive letter S should never be used (unless you remove it, as described e.g. in the VeraCrypt FAQ, and assign it to another partition/device."

Does this mean it is possible to retain the newly encrypted device with the new drive letter assignment (P, in this case) AND free up the old drive letter (S, in this case) for other use?

1. In the Mount Options, there is an option "Mount volume as removable medium." What is the effect of this option?

Thank you.

[Gary Marks]

Glad you succeeded, VLMin! My bad -- I should have advised you to skip step 12 (drive letter assignment). At the very least, it wastes a drive letter and can cause confusion after VeraCrypt assigns its own (necessarily different) drive letter upon mounting. It can easily be corrected, though. First unmount your encrypted volume P: in VeraCrypt, then remove the drive letter from the volume S: using Disk Management ("diskmgmt.msc"), and finally remount the encrypted volume using any available letter (including S:) in VeraCrypt. Just a one-time correction of my oversight.

As for mounting the encrypted partition as a Removable Medium, the primary difference has to do with write caching techniques that reduce the chance of data loss but slow performance, but a more complete description is available here...
https://veracrypt.fr/en/Removable%20Medium%20Volume.html

[Gary Marks]

VLMin -- I do have one more idea that might suit your situation. Since you're using the portable version of VeraCrypt and encrypting a flash drive, the idea would be to create two partitions rather than one. Leave the first one unencrypted, assign it a Windows drive letter, and copy the VeraCrypt portable program files there (around 44 MB for both 32-bit and 64-bit files). The second partition would be the remainder of the drive and be encrypted, with the only drive letter assigned by VeraCrypt upon mounting. This scheme would increase the convenience of the flash drive's portable nature, with the program files always readily available. The tradeoff is that it would be immediately recognizable that you're using encryption, so the International Spy Handbook recommends against it :-)

[RealTehreal]

And you have to keep in mind that you need administrative permissions to mount an encrypted volume, when using the portable version of VC.

[VLMin]

Hi everyone, and thank you for all your help and suggestions!

For practice, and to improve some of my settings (e.g., longer PWD, PIM, removable medium), I took down everything I had done and started over. This time things went smoothly. Yay! (Or Yeah!, as it were.)

The removable medium docs state: "Windows is prevented from automatically creating the ‘Recycled’ and/or the ‘System Volume Information’ folders on VeraCrypt volumes (in Windows, these folders are used by the Recycle Bin and System Restore features)."

The new, encrypted drive does indeed contain a System Volume Information folder. Inside is a file called WPSettings.dat, which attempts to open with Photo Director 10. In NPP, it opens as gibberish, in which I don't happen to be completely fluent. (Only somewhat fluent :) Does this sound "right"?

Gary and RealTehreal, regarding your suggestion that I create dual partitions, I thought about it. But my situation is such that I will only use this drive on computers on which I have admin access. Since my purpose is to protect the data in the event of loss of the drive or the like, I have chosen a single, full-disk solution in this case.

I have gone from stuck to semi-fluent, and I could not have done so without your kind help. Thank you!!!