encrypting partitions with LUKS in Linux

with these commands we encrypt a full partition located under /dev/sde1
(UUID=7a89446f-c43f-41b1-bc2b-99c74c64cdeb)

In the below steps I use dcfldd (which is much more user friendly than dd and gives you progress status) and cryptsetup.

sudo apt-get install dcfldd cryptsetup

sudo dcfldd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sde1 statusinterval=10 bs=10M conv=notrunc
sudo cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sde1
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sde1 maxtor_encrypted
sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/maxtor_encrypted
sudo mkdir /mnt/maxtor_enc
sudo mount /dev/mapper/maxtor_encrypted /mnt/maxtor_enc -t ext3 -o noatime,nodiratime

it is safer to use UUIDs instead of /dev/sde1 because even if order of the drives changes (USB drives, or because of your BIOS) you always can uniquely identify the one with the unique UUID.
You can get the UUIDs of all of your disks' partitions by running

$ blkid

Now let's write to scripts for mounting and umounting our encrypted drive:

chris@emeadb:~/bin$ cat mycryptmount
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/bin/:/bin/:/usr/bin/
echo "mounting encrypted drive"

df | grep maxtor_enc && sudo /home/chris/bin/mycryptumount
echo "maxtor_enc umounted"

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/disk/by-uuid/7a89446f-c43f-41b1-bc2b-99c74c64cdeb maxtor_encrypted
sudo mount /dev/mapper/maxtor_encrypted /mnt/maxtor_enc -t ext3 -o noatime,nodiratime

chris@emeadb:~/bin$ cat mycryptumount
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/bin/:/bin/:/usr/bin/

sudo umount /dev/mapper/maxtor_encrypted
sudo cryptsetup luksClose maxtor_encrypted

chmod +x both of them

now you are able to mount with

$ mycryptmount

and umount with

$ mycrypumount