Open Dental Forum

I have a mac at home and windows at work. IF I want to bring files home with sensitive information on them, patient notes, etc. How can I encrypt the files so both computers (Mac & Windows) can read them. Windows uses bitlocker which doesn't work on Mac and Mac uses FireVault which doesn't work on Windows. TrueCrypt is defunct so what is everyone else using. Files are too big for cloud.

Hey there,
I'm not sure if you've found a way around this but for the most part drives aren't interchangeable between Windows/Mac because of the way the drive's filesystems are formatted. I've read that if you format the drive to use the NTFS file system then Windows can read/write to the drive and the MAC can read (not write). There is a new-ish filesystem called exFAT which Snow Leopard and Lion support for Mac, and Windows XP and later support. With all that working the encryption is quite a problem. I haven't found any encryption that works with both Windows and Mac, but supposedly TrueCrypt does. However right now it seems that TrueCrypt is under some contention so who knows. I don't really know of a solution to make encryption work between Windows and Mac that is current.

Are you trying to restore a backup at home for redundancy or work on the files at home?

If it's just backup, why not just use Carbonite? They're HIPAA compliant and although it may take a few days for everything to upload initially, once that's done backups are no big deal. They have a Pro version that allows you to backup MySQL without having to shut down and restart the service.

If you just want to work from home, why not try LogMeIn Pro?

I think I may have found a solution. IF ALL my patient data is in a virtual machine and that virtual machine is encrypted does that satisfy the HIPPA requirement? Trying to get away from using bitlocker or file vault so I can access files in both OS's.

drmaximus wrote:I think I may have found a solution. IF ALL my patient data is in a virtual machine and that virtual machine is encrypted does that satisfy the HIPPA requirement? Trying to get away from using bitlocker or file vault so I can access files in both OS's.

I think you'd be fine there with HIPAA compliance. It might be simpler to keep using BitLocker at the office for the external drive(s) then setup a VM on your mac at home. I think that would be easier to implement and maintain.