uncadonego on 1/6/2008 at 16:34
My Memorex Rotodrive thumb drive has a password sign in. You can't see the contents of the drive unless you know the password. Likewise my Verbatim drives have something similar, no sign in with the password, no lookie at the contents of the drive. My Cruzer drives also have something similar. Unfortunately, my Kingston thumb drives don't have such software.
I'm looking at an evaluation copy of Folder Lock, but I just don't know if I can stomach forking over $35 US for a simple folder hider with a password.
Has anyone found any decent freeware that does this simple task for thumb drives? I can't seem to find anything through Google, although with only a 56k modem, and the complete mucky slowdowns during the googlead loading (including on these forums), it would take me days to go through them all.
Kolya on 2/6/2008 at 10:53
I use (
http://www.truecrypt.org/) Truecrypt for all my sticks and stones. It's free, open source, easy to handle and fast. I can't say much about the security level but it supports different encryption methods, random key generation and hidden partitions. Seems reasonable unless you carry government secrets around, maybe even then.
doctorfrog on 8/6/2008 at 01:50
I'm a happy TrueCrypt user as well. To expand on the above post, you can create an encrypted container, which you mount as a separate drive. Any characteristics of what's inside is secured, so no directories or filenames are disclosed, and so forth.
Downside is that to pull this off, you need to be an administrator-level user in XP. You might want to reserve some drive space for the occasion that you are not, and keep a few other secure tools around for mucking about on your unencrypted space, (
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Other/fSekrit/) fsekrit (an encrypted notepad), (
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/) dscrypt (tiny proggie that encrypts any file), and (
http://www.cylog.org/utilities/cybershredder.jsp) CyberShredder (secure file deletion).
To ease my use of TrueCrypt, I use it in conjunction with PStart, a simple app-launcher designed for removable drives. PStart kicks off a TrueCrypt instance, which automatically mounts the encrypted container and prompts for a password. The PStart menu also contains a handy shortcut to another PStart menu system inside the encrypted container which contains all my proggies and files, and shortcuts to dismount the container and eject the drive using (
http://lifehacker.com/338401/quickly-eject-usb-gadgets-with-usb-disk-ejector) USBDiskEject.
I know you didn't ask for all of the above, but these programs pretty much replace and do a better job than any OEM encrypter or U3 launcher that I've ever seen.
