Thanks for all of the responses on my questions concerning the CryptoStacker idea. I am kind of sick of talking about it though, and so I went out today and did some research on drivers and such. I am planning to create a software implementation of a PGP driver starting maybe tomorrow (I am being payed real dollars to write other code at the moment) for on-the-fly HD encryption. I haven't quite figured out how to create a commercially distrubutable system yet, but there really is no point sitting around arguing about this and that detail until somebody actually goes out and tries it... I have a feeling that this version will be slow as balls without hardware support, but that's not really the problem, is it? The main focus that I have right now is making the thing work. There have been lots of neat suggestions about multiple layers and suchlike tooalso, which are all fine and dandy, but they kind of missed the point: mainly what I am interested in is preventing access to the data on my HD by anyone but ME, screw LANs and multi-user problems and all of that, I just want to create a system whereby if the Secret Service busts down my door tomorrow while I am not here to throw the drive across the room, they will never be able to fetch out any incriminating evidence by picking apart my system in some lab somewhere. I can also see the advantage of a business worrying about spying, or even government agencies (wouldn't that be ironic) worrying about security and considering networks insecure. Anyway, we can add bells and whistles like network support and multiple layers and suchlike after we figure out how to get the basic engine to work, right? I have also seen everyone suggesting DES instead of PGP. I suppose that would really be a great idea for speed and suchlike, for some reason I was kind of attached to the whole public key idea, but I suppose that would be kind of close-to-worthless in this context, wouldn't it? I suppose we are to the point where I can use some actual technical advice, no need to reinvent the wheel, right? If anyone has any information of the overall architecture of projects like Stacker or DoubleStor, I would appreciate the input. I have used both in the past and I am kind of leaning toward a system like DoubleStor (which maintains directory structures and such, but compresses each file in place) for simplicity, but I am kind of hesitant to leave even a hint of the overall structure of the disk laying around for prying eyes. Trouble is, I don't have much experience screwing around with the FAT and such so I wouldn't want to do anything so bold as munching the entire disk into a single file and suchlike. Any ideas? -Ryan the Bit Wallah