Securing External Drive

[titus]

Hello,

Any suggestions on how to password protect a removable external hard drive? It's connected via USB so anyone can take it away.

Titus

[Matt]

Titus,

If it is an XP Pro or Windows 2003 system, you can turn on the encrypting file system. (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/topics/cryptographyetc/efs.mspx#EOAA)

If it is a XP home or Linux, let me know, and I can make other suggestions.

Regards,
Matt

[titus]

Hello,

It is XP Home. Thanks.

Titus

[Matt]

Titus,

It isn't free (and the upgrade to XP Pro might be a better option), but SafeHouse is recommended. http://www.pcdynamics.com/SafeHouse

Matthew

[powerboy]

If you want to secure that drive, I would suggest using PGP whole disk encryption. I would never use a M$ product to encrypt my data solely because they do not make their source code public.

PGP has a freeware version, but they do not allow whole disk encryption. What you could do with the free version is just create an encrypted disk volume of whatever size suits your needs and lock it up. The whole drive will not be encrypted, but any sensitive data you put in your newly created volume will be.

There are a few free programs which are decent, an example of which is http://www.truecrypt.org/

Hope this helps