Under Leopard unmounting a drive that has two volumes on it presents a dialog asking if unmounting the selected or both volumes is desired.

Yes, that’s correct, except to use this feature the drive has to be split into two partitions (so there are two separate volumes) and have one of them encrypted. If we could do that using the default Leopard installation, then we could also do it with one partition.

With this script, you only have one volume, which is hidden. Your encrypted ‘volume’ is actually an encrypted disk image which resides on the hidden partition. So this wouldn’t work.

Also, when you hit ‘Cancel’, the encrypted volume doesn’t mount. Therefore, there are no visible volumes on the Desktop that belong to your encrypted memory stick, so this feature cannot be used.

TrueCrypt has recently released an OS X version, but I have not been able (or have not tried hard enough) to make it work for me. I believe it uses MacFUSE, and actually encrypts the volume. I still prefer this method as it doesn’t rely on any third-party plugins

Here’s a tip about fixing the password being visible while typing it.

Excellent! Thanks!

Please correct me if I’m wrong but the download tgz appears to have the contents of the prepare/mount scripts backwards, i.e the prepare script starts with “on adding folder items” and the mount script starts with “on open dropped item.”

Whoops

Yes, you’re right, I accidentally reversed the scripts for those two files. Just fixed it.

I also made a small fix in the folder action script to enable it to work with sparsebundles (which in the linux environment just appear as directories, not files).

I’ll wait ’til I hear from you before continuing.

Sure looks like a neat idea though.

Cheers,
Jim

PS – Under Leopard unmounting a drive that has two volumes on it presents a dialog asking if unmounting the selected or both volumes is desired. This could help solve the “cancel” problem. You just make one volume encripted and leave the other alone. Both will mount on insert but only one will be visible. Canceling the password request will leave the hidden volume open but it can then be ejected by answering “both” when ejecting the visible one.

Change:
display dialog “Enter password for encrypted image:” default answer thePass

To:
display dialog “Enter password for encrypted image:” default answer thePass with hidden answer

That will make the password entry into bullets.

=)
-John