USB flash drive security

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So i keep a USB flash drive on my keychain. I had most of my college papers, resume, random photos, couple of PDF service manuals. Nothing super important like tax paperwork. But nonetheless it jumped off my keychain. I have a clue where it is but most likely i'll never find it. It most likely is somewhere at a LARGE parking lot or somewhere in the forest. I hope that its smashed by a tire or something.

Anyways... having lost that it made me think. I should of put sometype of password on it. The person who finds it could use it as a base to do w/e. Has my personal info on my resume and some papers.

I was thinking even a simply noob password would of kept some people out. Like if i password protected my resume in word. But i rather just encrypt the drive. I'm attempting to use this software "Veracrypt" to do it but it looks like i have to setup sometype of mount and unmount setup to read it. This wasn't what i wanted because i wanted to be use the drive on other computers.

Any software out there that does this? Should i buy one of those fancy encryption pre-done flash drives? I know my WD portable HD has that encryption and that what i want.
 
I won a 32GB Kingston DataTraveler Locker that is hardware encrypted. To redo the password to access it reformats the thing so you can't see what was on there.
 
Some versions of Windows 7, 8, and 10 come with Bitlocker and you can use Bitlocker to Go to encrypt flash drives. Veracrypt is a fork of TrueCrypt and can also be used to encrypt flash drives.
 
BitLocker To Go if you use Windows machines. Otherwise, get a hardware encryption drive like IronKey.
 
Kind of old school, but do all the computers you use have WinRAR on them? If so, you can simply archive and encrypt/password protect your files. It won't be as secure as something like GPG, or even some of the other solutions mentioned, but it will be fairly painless.
 
use a 7.x version of TrueCrypt and put it on the USB drive along with the encrypted
TrueCrypt colume.

you can automate the mount process but I find it easy to do each time I need to
access the files. usually the USB drive is used to access files outside your
desktop or laptop.
 
Originally Posted By: dparm
BitLocker To Go if you use Windows machines. Otherwise, get a hardware encryption drive like IronKey.


I think this is the golden ticket. Couple questions before i try this... how new of the windows OS do i need? There are 2 computers that i use randomly still on XP pro and Vista. Everything else is win7-win10.



Originally Posted By: Garak
Kind of old school, but do all the computers you use have WinRAR on them? If so, you can simply archive and encrypt/password protect your files. It won't be as secure as something like GPG, or even some of the other solutions mentioned, but it will be fairly painless.


I wanted to do this but my work computer prevents me from installing any apps.

Like i said, overall i dont need the most secure. A password is better then no password even if the password is "password1".
 
In all honesty I would first be more concerned about upgrading to a Win 7/8/10 distro before something as a USB. Windows XP and Vista are no longer supported and there are numerous amounts of exploits out there for them that can make you a sitting target if you aren't wise with what you do on your computer.
 
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