Can I Password Protect Data CDs ?

[gregg]

Hi,

I regularly back up my data on the CDs.

I would like to protect that data and would like to know if I can lock those CDs using the password just in case if it falls into the wrong hands.

If yes can somebody please explain how?

I have Win XP ( Home )

I am using “Sonic Record Now V. 6.5 ” software to burn the CDs.

Thank You.

Regards,
Greg

 

[bjpatrick]

I'm not aware of software that can lock a cd for you but there are many programs that can password protect the data on the cd. There isa feature in MS Office that will allow one to do so. There are also varios programs out there that will allow you to password protect data.

 

[Codesmith]

Just put them in a password protected archive before burning them.

BTW Office XP's encryption is seriously flawed, a file always keeps the same encryption key, and if someone gets several revisions of a file they can crack the encryption in a matter of days.

Microsoft isn't taking this seriously because they think it is unlikey a hacker would have access to multipe revisions of the same file.

A more secure option than offices password protection would be to use a program like BestCrypt to create a encrypted virtual hard drive and keep your documents there.

 

[gregg]

I am new to the encryption related software to use.

I need to protect the the large amount of data, almost 20 GB total.

I need to protect it on my hard disk as well as its back ups on CDs whch will amount to almost 30 CDs.

So what kind of protection would be easy to do as well as provide best protection?

If a password protected software is better then thus far I have been suggested either,

(1) BestCrypt OR
(2) Cryptainer

Can anybody using these software please give me their Pros & Cons or opinions ?

Also If I back up the password protected drive using one of the above software on CDs, then do I still need to password protect each CD or how else do I do it?

I would Really would appreciate all the feedback.

Thank You,
Greg

 

[Codesmith]

I have tried BestCrypt it worked perfectly.

You can create a 20 GB virutal drive, which will exist as a 20 GB file on one of your hard drives. You can use a compression utilty to divide the files into parts small enough to fit on CD/DVD but you would have to restore all the parts to access any of the files.

Another option would be to create 5 different 4GB containers, each of which could be burnt on to one DVDR.

You can then mount the containers from the DVD. Or copy the file to your hard drive and mount it from there.

You will only be able to access the data from PCs with bestcrypt installed, but there is a 15 day trial, and when it expires you can still have read only access to the containers.

I can't really think of any con's other than the compainion program bestwipe (erases deleted/moved files so that they can't be recovered from the hard drive), kept crashing and wouldn't run on my old XP SP2 installation. I kept having small problems like that after upgrading from SP1a to SP2.


After I did a clean install of XP SP2 BestCrypt worked fine.

Also file transfers are so disc bound that I didn't notice any delay or slowdown do to the encryption. The CPU can encrypt the files faster than the hard drive can transfer them.

 

[clicx]

A very easy way to create a password protected CD/DVD is using KernSafe SecureCD Creator.
It is using AES256 , autorunable and on-the-fly encryption.
http://www.kernsafe.com/product.aspx?id=4&&name=Overview
It is also a ISO editor.

 

[IchiroArai68]

Use BestCrypt as it's free, stable and quite popular. Avoid referenced KernSafe stuff as it's obvious junk. Driver is not signed so does not install under Windows 7 or Vista and on XP SP3 it just BSODs the machine after few megabytes copied from the protected disc. I have no clue who they sell it and who's buying

I.A.