Remember when the developers of TrueCrypt suddenly stopped the project back in 2014 and recommended that users started looking for alternatives? One of these alternatives was VeryCrypt, a fork of the TrueCrypt. Another Disk Cryptor, which I did use for some years.
Disk Cryptor development stopped about ten years ago and it looked as if the project was dead. However, in 2019, David Xanatos took over and started to released new versions of the software. You may know the developer from some of his other projects, such as Sandboxie Plus. DiskCryptor was first released as beta builds but then also as final builds.
The initial builds of the application were focused on improving compatibility and integrating support for new technologies. As a consequence, DiskCryptor should work fine under the latest versions of Windows 10 and 11.
The developer has released DiskCryptor 2.0 this week (and bug fix release 2.0.1), marking a major milestone in the development of the program.
He writes:
This release introduces substantial improvements across virtually every part of the software, including modern cryptography, hardware-backed security, storage management, performance, reliability, and usability.
A major addition is support for the Argon2id key derivation function, providing a modern, memory-hard alternative to the traditional KDFs for significantly improved resistance against password cracking attacks.
DiskCryptor now also supports optional TPM integration in the DCS bootloader, enabling hardware-backed protection and unattended system unlock configurations. Combined with optional Secure Boot support, this allows systems to take advantage of modern platform security features while maintaining DiskCryptor’s flexible boot architecture.
Since this is a major change, the new version is released as a pre-release at the time to gather feedback and react to any issues that might occur.
Is it ready for broader use again? I’m pretty happy with VeraCrypt at the moment and have no desire to switch to another encryption program at the moment, as it would be time consuming. However, if you still use an earlier version of DiskCryptor or want to start encrypting your drives for better protection, it may be worth a try.
I suggest you wait a bit though until the developer gives the okay that the pre-release phase is over. (via Günter Born)