USB drive password protection

Bobster · 24 Nov 2006 at 11:19

Hello,

Quick question.

Is there a way of password protecting a USB flash drive?

I know i could password protect folders within the drive, but is there actually a way of locking access to a USB flash drive itself.

Ideally when the drive is inserted, you will be prompted for a password that then gives you access. Is there software that does this?

I understand 'U3' drives may have something similar but unfortunatly your can't install the U3 software on non U3 drives.

Any advice welcome.

Cheers

Bobster.

Snow-Munki · 24 Nov 2006 at 11:38

What USB drive do you have ?

A lot of them come with software so you can lock the drive, or lock a certain partition off. I know you can with Kingston drives for example

Bobster · 24 Nov 2006 at 12:13

Snow-Munki said:
What USB drive do you have ?

A lot of them come with software so you can lock the drive, or lock a certain partition off. I know you can with Kingston drives for example

Thats the thing.

I work for an IT dept of a company and people have alsorts of diffrent makes of drives. Recently we have been purchasing Kingston U3 drives for the password protection feature.

Having a bit of software that would protect any drive would be pretty good though.

Snow-Munki · 24 Nov 2006 at 12:35

ahh must be a nightmare then !!

As here we have set a standard which USB is used.

Golden Ape · 24 Nov 2006 at 13:28

Not sure if it helps but I was thinking about ways of trying to do this recently and had hit upon the idea of using TrueCrypt (freeware encryption) to encrypt the drive. Didn't really look into it in great detail but careful management of the encryption key might acheive what you're after. I think you might be able to run TrueCrypt off a non-encypted protion of the drive, and so wouldn't need to have it installed on every machine the drive was plugged into.

Bobster · 24 Nov 2006 at 14:00

Snow-Munki said:
ahh must be a nightmare then !!

As here we have set a standard which USB is used.

We try to here but then you get people and department buying there own, then asking if they can password protect them. If they had come to us in the first place it would be do much of an issue.

Golden ape

Thats for that. I'll have a look.

I know it's not really that hard to set password protected folders within the drive. But on the other hand it's not hard to crack password protected folders with easy to get ahold of software.