Question regarding Kde Partion Manager

Hello,

I have created a encrypted luks 1 ext4 partion on my external HDD.

This is the steps to that I followed.

-Backed up my data.
-Cleared the HDD
-Created new encrypted partion (selected ext4 and option to encrypt the partion using luks (did not toggle luks 2) and then set my passphrase.

I have tested that I can log in and access the files that I put in my encrypted partion.

I can also log in to a live environment and then access my data after entering my passphrase.

Although I feel I have taken all the precautions, I still thought I should confirm with the community.
Am I somehow messing up? Missing something?
Can I take any more precautions, so as to not lose my data?

One particular source of anxiety is that while I was researching on how to do encryption, I came across a post(that I can’t find anymore) where the person lost all their data, even after knowing the passphrase because they didn’t have the headerfile.
Now this was a old post and they did a manual set-up (I think), and I have verified that I can access my drive from a live environment but still, could I ever end up in a similar situation (or any other possible situation leading me to not access my data?)

Sorry for a rather amateurish question.
I just wanted some opinions from people who have done this before

Cheers.

Hi kay

It took me years to finally realize to stop playing around with something that I was afraid to lose.

If you can afford to, bag your precious drive or just disconnect it and start fresh with a different drive. Either clone the main drive or start from scratch. The stress will be gone and you can do whatever you want as many times as you need.

Vektor

Sorry if my post wasn’t clear, as I am doing exactly that.
I have cloned my hdd and am now messing around in a empty hdd

I did mess up a few times, but I think now I have gotten everything working just fine.
I would however, like to confirm with the community, that I have not made any mistakes, before restoring my data on the encrypted hdd ,as restoring a large hdd over and over again, is a chore I would like to avoid.

Hi kay

Thanks for the update.

I get the impression you want to know if things will work out the way you want. There are so many ways for things to go sideways it is impossible to predict success.

This seems more about backups in general than a specific program to use.

I do not see how you can avoid doing a restore. You have to test the restored product to know if things went ok.

It seems you will need another hdd to restore to just to test the process. They say concerning backups “3 is 2, 2 is 1 and 1 is none” so I would still bag the primary drive and only work with 2 hdd’s because testing will be necessary.

I hope this is making sense. Sometimes I go overboard just to be safe.

Good luck

Vektor

I think you have misunderstood me here

I have backups of my data so that’s not a concern.
I have already created a encrypted partion, and moved my files in it.
I can access it from my current os (Fedora 40)
I can also access it from a live environment (Fedora 40).

I want to confirm if what I have done is, created a encrypted hdd that can be acessed from any Linux OS (like a encrypted usb HDD).

What I want to avoid is to switch my OS or Update my current one and then be locked out of the HDD because some sort of key was stored within this installation and is now lost. (Basically is the HDD self sufficiently decryptable?).

I do know there can be accidents with encryption that can lead to data loss. This post is not about that.

If I have backups why bother asking? just restore when things go wrong:
I wanted to avoid restoring as the data amount is large and is backed up on a old hdd, transferring everything is a half day chore and I want to avoid doing it, even once more than needed.

I wanted to confirm that a partition created by KDE Partion Manager is supposed to work as I think it does above?

If you need any more info do ask
Thanks.