Password protect my thumbdrive?

May 17, 2005 3:26 PM

Does anyone know a simple (and free) method of password-protecting my USB thumbdrive?
posted by celibate_life to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

PGP? That's what I'd use. Just encrypt the files.
posted by autojack at 3:30 PM on May 17, 2005

AxCrypt is good for encrypting on a computer and decrypting off the drive itself.
posted by riffola at 3:32 PM on May 17, 2005

Truecrypt is good, but Windows only. I have a small (2MB) unencrypted partition for the program on my USB drive, and have all my data on an encrypted partition that takes up the rest of the drive space.
posted by nixxon at 3:49 PM on May 17, 2005

Seconding TrueCrypt or some PGP implementation.
posted by Jairus at 3:59 PM on May 17, 2005

Response by poster: Is there anything simpler than this (I'm kinda scared of partitioning, formatting, etc.)? I don't need this to be very secure at all. I just don't want the average joe to pick up my USB drive and be able to look through all my information. Ideally it would go something like this:
1 Insert flash drive
2 password prompt
3 enter correct password
4 see all files.

Maybe a tiny program I could keep on the drive itself?
posted by celibate_life at 4:32 PM on May 17, 2005

What OS are you using? If you use Mac OS X you can use the OS utility Disk Copy to create an encrypted disk image on the USB flash drive. To use it just, 1) insert flash drive, 2) double-click disk image, 3) enter password, 4) a new volume will show up on the desktop containing all the current files as well as allow you to add and delete files.
posted by RichardP at 4:44 PM on May 17, 2005

Do you already own a thumbdrive? Some have security stuff bundled with them. I believe my Swissbit drive that's part of my little Swiss Army Knife came with such a tool. Older drives did it in hardware, but that means you have to install drivers. Newer drives tend to have a little utility on the drive when you get them.
posted by krisjohn at 8:28 PM on May 17, 2005

Awesome, I was just searching for a good solution for this.

A question (or two) about WinZip's encryption. Seems the method only encrypts individual files. Is there any way to encrypt the Zip file itself?

If not, do I need to encrypt each file I add to the Zip file as I add them? Or can I set it to encrypt all files added, regardless of when I add them?
posted by tr33hggr at 7:09 AM on May 18, 2005

Response by poster: Okay, cool...this definitely seems like the simplest method so far. However, it looks like this encrypts each file individually, so that I need to enter the password to open single files. Is there a way to encrypt a folder without encrypting its actual contents?
posted by celibate_life at 8:54 AM on May 18, 2005

Response by poster: Oh...I completely misread tr33hggr's question. Looks like he already asked this.
posted by celibate_life at 8:56 AM on May 18, 2005

*crickets*
posted by tr33hggr at 12:46 PM on May 18, 2005

Yes, WinZip (or WinRAR) will encrpyt files as they are added to a password protected archive.

Another possible solution is some of the bundled password protection software that comes with USB drives. The drive I got (EdgeTech DiskGo!) comes with some that you can download from their site (http://www.edgetechcorp.com/support/products/portable-drives/usb-flash-drive/style1-after-12-03.asp). Good luck.
posted by noahv at 2:43 PM on May 18, 2005

Thanks!
posted by tr33hggr at 5:55 AM on May 19, 2005