How To Password Protect Your USB 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 Flash Drive Security Software 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.

Flash Drive Security software protects your USB drive by making it look empty to anyone who hasn't got the password. It uses state of the art 256-bit encryption which basically means even with the world's most powerful computer it won't get cracked any time soon (maybe before the universe ends but maybe not).

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