John,

Since so many people have said it's flawless, I'd like to point out this is not always the case.  The particular version of the particular package that we have installs some system libraries that caused a program I use on a moderately frequent basis to crash every time I tried to open a file on a network drive.  It took me about 9 months to figure out what the cause was, during which time I had to manually copy things to the local drive before I could open them in that particular program.  The vendor of the encryption software has a newer version but our IT department is using an older version.  There is another workaround but it's kind of a hack.

So I'd say problems are very rare, but if you run into strange behavior, don't rule out encryption as a possible cause.

-Eric



On Aug 17, 2011, at 3:13 PM, Jrh wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> My institution is introducing concerted measures for improved security via encryption of files. A laudable plan in case of loss or theft of a computer with official files eg exams or student records type of information stored on it.
> 
> Files, folders or a whole disk drive can be encrypted. Whilst I can target specific files, this could get messy and time consuming to target them and keep track of new to-be-encrypted files. It is tempting therefore to agree to complete encryption. However, as my laptop is my calculations' workbench, as well as office tasks, I am concerned that unexpected runtime errors may occur from encryption and there may be difficulties of transferability of data files to colleagues and students, and to eg PDB.
> 
> Does anyone have experience of encryption? Are my anxieties misplaced? If not, will I need to plan to separate office files, which could then all be encrypted, from crystallographic data files/calculations, which could be left unencrypted. If separate treatment is the best plan does one need two computers once more, rather than the one laptop? A different solution would be to try to insist on an institutional repository keeping such files.
> 
> In anticipation,
> Thankyou,
> John
> Prof John R Helliwell DSc