How To Password Protect Your USB Drive   by GeoffWhite

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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 DTI 4 GB USB Flash Drive

Kingston DTI 4 GB USB Flash Drive

Amazon Price: $12.35 (as of 10/06/2008)

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 

A USB flash drive is a NAND-type flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much shorter than a floppy disk (1 to 4 inches or 2.5 to 10 cm), and weigh less than 2 ounces (60 g). Storage capacities typically range from 64 MB to 64 GB[http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/29/buslinks-64gb-usb-2-0-flash-drive-pro-2-series/ Engadget: BUSlink's 64GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive PRO 2 Series] with steady improvements in size and price per gigabyte.

Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles

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

AboutCom-Swivel-Pro-Flash.

and have 10-year data retention,

"USB flash drive weighs 32 g", Trade Media Ltd, June 2006, webpage:

GSources-flash-6102.

connected by USB 1.1 or USB 2.0. USB Memory card readers are also available, whereby rather than being built-in, the memory is a removable flash memory card housed in what is otherwise a regular USB flash drive, as described below.

USB flash drives offer potential advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly the floppy disk. They are more compact, faster, hold much more data, have a more durable design, and are more reliable for lack of moving parts. Additionally, it has become increasingly common for computers to ship without floppy disk drives. USB ports, on the other hand, appear on almost every current mainstream PC and laptop. These types of 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 also be faster than an optical disc drive, while storing a larger amount of data in a much smaller space.

Nothing actually moves in a flash drive: it is called a drive because it is designed to read and write data using the same system commands as a mechanical disk drive, 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.

A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberised case, robust enough to be carried with no additional protection, in a pocket or on a key chain for example. The USB connector is protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not liable to be damaged if exposed. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing them to be plugged into a port on a personal computer.

To access the drive it must be connected to a USB port, which powers the drive and allows it to send and receive data. Some flash drives, especially high-speed drives, may require more power than the limited amount provided by a bus-powered USB hub, such as those built into some computer keyboards or monitors. These drives will not work properly unless plugged directly into a host controller (i.e., the ports found on the computer itself) or a self-powered hub.

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

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