There is a reason that high-quality encryption was once classified as a "munition" by the US government. You cannot accidentally create it. You need a very good PRNG or an algo such as AES. Don't worry, your formats will (and cannot) be confused with encrypted data.

It's chi-square and modulo 512. It's nothing more complicated than that. TCHunt has been doing this for more than a year now.

All TC volumes are modulo 512 (very rare) and pass chi-square test (even rarer). Check out TCHunt. It's amazing. http://16systems.com/TCHunt/index.php It will find *all* of your TrueCrypt volumes. They also disclose how they do it.

TCHunt found all of my TrueCrypt volumes. It's free too. http://16systems.com/TCHunt/index.php

No. It seems to being doing more than just basic entropy. ent reports that sparse TC volumes are not random, yet TCHunt finds them.

If you plan to modernize your toolchain and overall build process, I'd strongly encourage you to get the latest 2.6 source. Otherwise it's a wasted effort IMO. Updating everything together will get you another 6 years. Only updating partially (2.4 kernel with new build tools) may not buy you that much time.