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Ricoh EncryptEase: CD-R Password Protection Made Easy

 by Purav Sanghani on February 7, 2006 12:05 AM EST
18 Comments | Add A Comment
18 Comments
EncryptEase Complete Software - The Burn Process

The burn process is more than just writing the data to the disc. There are a total of 4 or 5 steps, depending on what we select for comparing data. In the first step, the data is prepared for the entire process. The second step involves encrypting the data followed by creating an image file on the hard drive selected. These first three tasks finished fairly quickly because of our Athlon 64 based test bed. We're assuming that it will take much longer on a 133MHz processor, which is the minimum requirement for a Windows 2000 system.

The fourth step in the entire process is writing the prepared image to the disc. The length of this step depends on the optical writer that is used. Obviously, a drive that can't write to a CD-R faster than 24x will not be able to take full advantage of the 40x maximum speed of the media. The final step compares the written data to the original, which, again, is an optional step.

Once all of the steps have finished, the EncryptEase software will present us with a simple "Write process complete." dialog box. After clicking on "OK", we can see the session and the files on the disc. If there are multiple sessions on the disc, we will be able to see each session by clicking on the associated tab. The tabs themselves are labeled with numbers, which make it difficult to differentiate the session that you want to access if there are more than just a couple of sessions on the disc. Actual descriptive text labels would have been much more helpful. Hopefully, Ricoh incorporates something like that into their DVD based EncryptEase media.


EncryptEase Complete Software – Create a New Session EncryptEase Complete Software – Extracting Encrypted Files
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  • tygrus - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    I can understand that hiding the data in another section of the CD makes it harder to extract, the system should not rely on this. Other tools could be used to copy or extract the raw data. It would have been better to have the software to use the CD to be self-suficient and require no driver to be installed. How long before zombe PC's are decrypting CD's ?

    Webmaster: Can you please add the title of the article/thread to the top of the page a link to open the thread in a new window (or inline frame). This would make it easier to reference and quote.

  • tygrus - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    No edit ...

    spelling corrections ...

    self-sufficient
    zombie

  • chilled - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    Why isn't it just possible to have the software write the data that is pre-recorded onto the disc at burn time, instead of in advance?

    Wouldn't this mean that any media could be used, instead of paying $5 per CDR....?

  • artifex - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    Having a program ridealong on every disc is an unnecessary waste of space, once you've had the opportunity to install the driver once. Basically, this seems like an excuse to take BestCrypt or DriveCrypt type software to a per-disc fee structure. Only the software sounds much more limited. And it certainly locks you into Windows for data retrieval, later.

    Oh, and what do you do when you want to back up these encrypted disks? And how come you can't browse the data in these files transparently, but have to copy them to the hard drive?

  • Calin - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    This is nothing different than having a file compressed with password. I wonder how well this system survives to a storage error... in a normal CD, only the "scratched" file is lost, in this way it might be the entire session is lost.
    Agree with the "per disk" fee, and it is certanly too expensive, as you could buy 10 normal CDs for the price of one of these

  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    EncryptEase is a good idea, but at a suggested retail of $6.99 for a 600MB CD-R disk and an actual selling price of more than $5 per CD-R it is probably too expensive to attract many home users. With the really cheap prices of CD-R blanks, CD-RW,DVD and DVD-RW blanks, more than $5 a disk for just 600MB of Data Storage, no matter how secure, seems very expensive for home users.

    If Ricoh could do this for DVD and have it work for RW media it might make some cost sense.

  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    $5 for one 600MB CD-R that has some burning/encryption software included on the disc, when instead you could buy about 25 normal CD-R discs for the same price. Oh, I can really see these special discs flying off the shelves. Not.

    Strange that the price of the discs was not mentioned in the article...

  • Googer - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 - link

    How is this differant or any better than the securecord offerd by my Plextor Premieum?

    http://plextor.com/english/products/Premium.html">http://plextor.com/english/products/Premium.html
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