Password Protect External Hard Drive

[djweiser]

Hey,

Is there anyway to password protect an external harddrive? Ie i have all my documents etc on a new external 80GB, but someone could easily nick the HD, then have all my documents easily. So is there a way to password protect or encript, or whatever?

Cheers for the help.

[harrycary]

can't you just use password-protection on the specific folders in which your files reside?

[james_bond_rulez]

Originally posted by djweiser@18 July 2004 - 16:13
Hey,

Is there anyway to password protect an external harddrive? Ie i have all my documents etc on a new external 80GB, but someone could easily nick the HD, then have all my documents easily. So is there a way to password protect or encript, or whatever?

Cheers for the help.
using password to protect hdds isn't really a reliable way to guard your data, it is easily circumvented.

a good method is to always put hdd in places that only you know and guard it as if it's your own life ;)

[Broken]

There's plenty of good software for this kind of thing.
I'm not terriably conserned about security myself, but I use a program called Lock Folder, to hide certain things I have on my drives. ;) All it does is hide and password protect folders.

Other software, will also encrypt that folder's content and make it totally inexcessible without the password, i.e. http://www.clickok.co.uk/PalmTree/Index.html?source=google

[Ariel_001]

You can use a combo of winrar (http://www.rarlab.com/) and Eraser Pro (my friend FOSI has a copy :rolleyes: ). Use very long passwords (at least 10) with number /special characters / spaces /CAPS letter. It will hard to burte-force or directory attack the password on a avrage PC.

[Ariel_001]

Originally posted by Broken@18 July 2004 - 21:02
There's plenty of good software for this kind of thing.
I'm not terriably conserned about security myself, but I use a program called Lock Folder, to hide certain things I have on my drives. ;) All it does is hide and password protect folders.

Other software, will also encrypt that folder's content and make it totally inexcessible without the password, i.e. http://www.clickok.co.uk/PalmTree/Index.html?source=google
Lock Folder = Snake Oil

Anything that just hides data does not secure it !!!!!

*Beware*

[Storm]

Originally posted by Ariel_001@19 July 2004 - 05:47
You can use a combo of winrar (http://www.rarlab.com/) and Eraser Pro (my friend FOSI has a copy :rolleyes: ). Use very long passwords (at least 10) with number /special characters / spaces /CAPS letter. It will hard to burte-force or directory attack the password on a avrage PC.
use passwords of 7 or 15 caracters....... much harder to break as well ;)

[lynx]

XP has built in file encryption if you want to use it.

Select folder properties, General tab, advanced button, check the encrypt contents box.

Unfortunately I believe that the drawback with this is that it can only be decrypted by the file owner, and unless you are working in a full network environment that means the same user on the same pc, so if you have an external drive so you can move between pc's that won't work.

Administrator from the same system or network can take ownership of the file and can therefore decrypt it, but Admin from another system/network cannot. If you have to reinstall windows the system id will have changed, which then means you can't decrypt your files. For this reason it is important to keep a backup or ghost image of your windows partition.

[AnonXO]

Look for a program that will password protect a folder and encrypt it. Something where the encryptions keys are hiddens an can be stored on a floppy or CD. That way when you remove the floppy/CD the area of the HDD is completly in accessible.