Truecrypt: Encrypt entire drive without having a CD/DVD drive

If it's Windows, grab Microsoft's Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel. Run it as Administrator, install the driver, add a new virtual drive, and load TrueCrypt's rescue disc image on it. The .iso should be somewhere in %ProgramFiles%\TrueCrypt\

Edit: Virtual CloneDrive appears to support Windows 7 on x64.

This should be enough to trick TrueCrypt's disc check. Once it's done, don't forget to uninstall the Virtual CD driver.

To boot the rescue disc from a USB drive, you could try these:

• Creating a multiple boot USB stick (includes instructions for TC Rescue Disc)

Normally the Truecrypt Format application needs to verify that you've burned the created rescue disk to a CD/DVD drive, and it won't proceed until it does that.

In order to proceed without burning the rescue disk, you need to start the "Truecrypt Format" with the "/noisocheck" or "/n" flag. After the image is created, you can then save it to any folder on your drive, and later on burn it on a USB-drive, as mention in other posts.

More information: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=command-line-usage

/noisocheck or /n

Do not verify that TrueCrypt Rescue Disks are correctly burned. This can be useful e.g. in corporate environments where it may be more convenient to maintain a central repository of ISO images rather than a repository of CDs or DVDs. WARNING: Never attempt to use this option to facilitate the reuse of a previously created TrueCrypt Rescue Disk. Note that every time you encrypt a system partition/drive, you must create a new TrueCrypt Rescue Disk even if you use the same password. A previously created TrueCrypt Rescue Disk cannot be reused because it was created for a different master key.