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Easy and Simple solution to password protect (a folder on an) USB Drive?
I have a bunch of files on a USB Drive which I need to give to a friend of mine. Since the data on it is confidential, I want to password protect the folder with the data or the complete USB drive (either way, doesn't matter).
There are many solutions out there which can accomplish this task, but so far I haven't found one which is easy and simple which is required because my friend is a total computer newbie.
TrueCrypt is way to complex, Bitlocker takes ages to encrypt (1GB per 10 minutes) (I have 300GB of data) and other tools such as SafeHouse Explorer, USB DriveGuard etc mount a virtual drive instead of actually 'decrypting' files. That's not what I want.
I am looking for a 'one click' password protect solution: My friend should be able to click the folder, enter the password and presto, there are the files. Then he should be able to disconnect the drive using the 'safe remove hardware' feature in Windows, so not some sort of geeky 'lock drive' utility. I know BitLocker does this, but once again, it's way too slow. It would take 50 hours to encrypt the data, which is too long. I know that's a one time operation, but I need to give the drive to him within 48 hours.
I hope you guys have a solution for me. If not, I have to go with plan B and that's rarring all files and password protecting the rar file, but that's my last resort.
Thanks!
Comments
TrueCrypt is not hard to use, and is the easiest out of the lot. There is no "one-click" option that is secure.
@Daniel it might be easy for you and me, but mounting and unmounting is not something which is easy for a computer newbie.
It doesn't have to be super secure. I just don't want to have the average Joe plug in the drive and be able to copy the data. It just needs a password.
Very basic option, put it in a zip/rar file with password protection?
EDIT: Oops, just read that was your plan B anyway.
7-zip might be better, I think they uses AES? (Not sure & on mob)
Offtopic: You got 300gb of data and it's all confidential? Wow.
Ontopic: fastest solution would be to take the drive in your pocket, go to your friend, copy it onto his pc while staying in place, take the drive back. Encryption is a time-consuming thingie. (just my advice)
Use a Truecrypt container and create a BAT/Powershell script to mount it; it would make it no more difficult than using an encrypted ZIP/7z.
Encrypting files seemed more time consuming process to me, than encrypting a whole drive even of hundreds of GBs and copying everything to it (then "everything" becomes auto encrypted once in the encrypted volume), I haven't noticed any difference in the speed of copying files in, and from the encrypted volume during mounting it to my system, also encrypting the volume itself (that's done for once) didn't seem to go slower than the actual usb2/2.5'hdd speed.
That's why I'd recommend to encrypt a whole drive or a space on it (depends how much/what your need) , but while still using a simple program so that your friend can easily arrive to the point where he needs to enter password and unlock everything.
To simplify what I mean by an easy program, there's one called "Rohos Mini Drive" last time I've checked it was supporting a small drive space, but the idea in it is great however. I hope it's now supporting large volume encryption. It works in this way:
it allows you to create an invisible, password-encrypted volume on a part of your flash drive that you specify, and then it places a portable version of the program on the unencrypted partition on your flash drive. So that whenever you need to access your secure area you simply double click on the portable version that's available on the unencrypted partition of you flash, and enter you password, then you see the encrypted partition mounted to your PC where you can directly copy/paste anything!
But you just have to be careful when using that, like don't try to remove the encrypted volume through formatting the flash drive, as I've personally almost spoiled a flash drive of mine because of doing so.
if you do a small search you'll get many simple programs similar to "Rohos Mini Drive" that doesn't have loads of features but just does a specific encryption work.
Note: I don't depend myself on Rohos or simple programs to encrypt sensitive data
but for small tasks they are useful. For my own data I look for encryption software that has the strongest algorithms, there are encryption suits that comes from well known companies in security area!
If you meant that you need just any sort of locking, then Winrar might be easy as it has very strong encryption, you can use an automated, long password for your file. Also you can choose the compression speed to "very fast" so that your 300gb consume much less time to be archieved. Also you can create an executable file using Winrar, so that your friend clicks the file then it prompts for password, and password is entered then decompression path is decided and that's it. 7zip does the same I believe (besides it's way better in compressing!) except that 7zip is free.
Thanks for the replies guys. I eventually went with a .RAR file with a password. It took 3.5 hours to RAR (even though I set it on 'store', so no compression) and takes 10 minutes to open.
To be precise I have 300GB of data from which 193GB is confidential. Programs like AutoCad and Inventor create large files....
At the architect firm I worked once they also had this problem. They used truecrypt first, then split all the files in 4.2 GB files, zipped + pw'd them and burned them onto a DVD. If they would sent out a huge project all the workstation's were burning the discs, sometimes there would go out a package with more than 80 discs...
@Raymii That would be the case too if I hadn't used an external harddrive. I am now thinking of buying this hardware encrypted external harddrive, because I need to backup this kind of confidential data every now and then:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?&DocID=PD022063
I just read that Microsoft BitLocker does pretty much what you want (on windows that is) and also stumbled upon this: http://www.freeotfe.org/
@djvdorp It does indeed (see my first post) but it takes ages to encrypt, 1GB per 10 Minutes.
FreeOFTE is kinda like TrueCrypt. Requires mounting etc.
Get a newer processor :P (AES instructions)
No, honestly no idea. If you want to cypher that (ridiculous) amount of information, I think you must sacrifice time... or, get more computers to do the job.