How To Password Protect Your USB Drive

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How To Password Protect Your USB Drive

USB flash drives are portable. Which makes them easy to keep with you but unfortunately also makes them east to mislay.

The solution to protecting your USB drive depends on what you need to do and how much of the drives contents you need to protect.

If you only want to protect a handful of files on your USB flash drive then it's probably simplest to save them with a password. Programs like Word and Excel make it fairly easy to do this. Before saving your file, go to the Tools menu. Choose Options and then click on the Security tab. You'll be given the option to enter a password to open the file. Although the box only asks you to enter the password once, you'll be asked to type it in again before you can exit from the Options dialog box. But once you've done that, you're on your own. So make sure you can remember the password otherwise you'll have to resort to a program to recover passwords before you can open it again!

For many people, this will be enough protection. After all, those photos of beautiful looking scenery from your recent holiday probably don't need to be stored securely.

How To Protect Your Complete USB Flash Drive 

If you need to store lots of data securely on your USB drive then it makes sense to password protect the complete drive.

For instance, you wouldn't want other people to be able to get hold of your company's data if your drive went astray, would you?

If you don't mind splitting your USB drive into multiple "volumes" (kind of like virtual disk drives) and providing the files you want to protect aren't too large, you may want to check out the free program Cryptainer LE. The biggest snag is that the maximum volume size is 25Mb. So if you're dealing with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, you'll be fine. But if you're looking at Access databases and the like, it's likely that you'll soon run over this limit. It's also a pain in the neck to have to continually swap drives, so remember that when you're considering this program.

The best compromise I've found is a neat piece of software called Securestix which lets you password protect specific folders on your USB drive. This is a good solution - you can leave those holiday photos for all to see whilst making sure that your backup copy of your login passwords and your company data are securely locked away.

Securestix even comes with a password hint option (you don't have to use this, but it's there anyway) so that you can remember long forgotten passwords in much the same way that web sites let you get back a password from their secure servers.

The program is very simple to use and very affordable. You can download your copy instantly from this link.

What Do You Want To Password Protect On Your USB Flash Drive? 

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USB Flash Drive 

Kingston DataTraveler I - 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/4GB

Kingston DataTraveler I - 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/4GB

Amazon Price: $12.20 (as of 12/19/2009)Buy Now

This 4 GB USB flash drive lightens your load without emptying your wallet. As easy as click and drag, the DataTraveler holds just about any file you can think of--from reports and pictures, to spreadsheets and other important documents. It works with virtually any device with a USB port--even cross-platform from Macintosh to PC and vice versa.

More About USB Flash Drives 

Category: File - :USB Flash Drive.png|thumb|right|A 16 GB USB retractable flash drive.

A USB flash drive consists of flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 1.1 or 2.0 interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much smaller than a floppy disk, and most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz).http://peripherals.about.com/od/removablestorage/f/USBFAQ.htm Storage capacities in 2009 can be as large as 256 GB

"Kingston unveils 256GB thumb", MobileWhack.com, July 20 2009, webpage:

MobileWhack-Kingston-256GB.

with steady improvements in size and price per capacity.

Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles

"Imation Swivel Pro Flash Drive", About.com, 2008, webpage:

AboutCom-Swivel-Pro-Flash.

and have a 10-year data retention cycle.

"USB flash drive 10-year products", Trade Media Ltd, September 2009, webpage:

[http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/GeneralManager?point_search=on&page=search%2FProductSearchResults&product_search=on&supplier_search=off&article_search=off&type=new&search_what=1&query=USB+flash&point_id=3000000149681&catalog_id=2000000003844&from=&loc=t&AGG=N&action=GetPoint&action=DoFreeTextSearch].

USB flash drives are often used for the same purposes as floppy disks were. They are smaller, faster, have thousands of times more capacity, and are more durable and reliable due to their lack of moving parts. Until approximately 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disc drives, but most recent equipment has abandoned floppy disk drives in favor of USB ports.

Flash drives use the USB mass storage standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix-like systems. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than a much larger optical disc drive and can be read by most other systems such as the Playstation 3.

Nothing moves mechanically in a flash drive; the term drive persists because computers read and write flash-drive data using the same system commands as for a mechanical disk drive, with the storage appearing to the computer operating system and user interface as just another drive.

USB flash drives allow reading, writing, and erasing of data,

with some allowing 1 million write/erase cycles in each cell

of memory: if 100 uses per day, 1 million cycles could span

10,000 days or over 27 years. Some devices level the usage

by auto-shifting activity to underused sections of memory.

Flash drives are very robust mechanically, and can withstand anything that does not actually break the circuit board or connector.

A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberized case which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing plugging into a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist.

Most USB flash drives derive their power from the USB connection, and do not require a battery. Some devices which combine the functionality of a digital audio player with flash-drive-type storage require a battery for the player function.

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

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