Power Tips [part 2] – Mouse gestures

Summary

The tip described in the previous article can be slightly modified, and as a consequence – your mouse becomes extra flexible. You will be able to mount and dismount any of your virtual disks by a simple move of a mouse! Moreover, you get the possibility to use the same trick for any operations with your OS or a third-party application.

How?

This can be achieved by installing and configuring a program called Stroke-it. It is designed to bring mouse gestures to your entire Windows environment. A mouse gesture is a special move which is interpreted by the system in one way or another. For example, if you move the mouse, describing a 'Z' path – you can mount a virtual disk, while a 'K' would dismount it. 'Drawing' these characters is quite simple, it is very similar to writing on a Palm handheld or a Pocket PC.

1-2-3easy

Here are the steps you have to perform after installing the program:

Afterwards, you should repeat these steps, adding an action that will dismount the disk.

Tips  

• You should disable the mouse trail, in order not to reveal the way the 'enter disk password' prompt is called. 
• By holding down Ctrl you can override the gesture-mechanism (you will understand the meaning of this after your first drag'n'drop procedure). 
• Following the principle of the first tip, you can disable the tray-icon, hiding the way you use your mouse for gestures (and preventing others from seeing your settings).

Note:   Even though your settings cannot be discovered in an obvious way, an experienced person can easily spot them. That is why you are not advised to enter your password in the command line. In this case, someone can repeat your gesture and get access to your data without knowing the password. Just remember that if you do things right, then even if someone knows the gesture or the location of the encrypted image, your data is still well-guarded by AES-256 encryption.

Q&A

A list of gestures, as well as their schematics is available here.

Yes, StrokeIt is free for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use (excluding governmental entities and educational institutions). For-profit business entities, governmental entities, or educational institutions, your license will be free for an introductory ten (10) day period but you must purchase a valid end-user license after that period in order to continue using StrokeIt. An end-user license is only $10, and site licenses can be purchased at discounted rates.

Links  

• Private Disk Light: 128-bit encryption – free disk encryption software 
• Private Disk: 256-bit encryption – full-featured, user-friendly and reliable disk encryption software  
• Private Disk Multifactor: 256-bit encryption – disk encryption software with smart card/USB flash drive authentication  
• Private Disk FAQ: Our encryption software in questions and answers