USB Flash Drive Security

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin (More info?)

Is there a way to password protect USB Flash Dives? I am afraid to put
sensitive backup files for fear of losing drive and someone having access to
it. I just downloaded the USB Flash Drive manager hoping this would include
a password protection...but did not see this feature

--
Matthew

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin (More info?)

> Is there a way to password protect USB Flash Dives?

Maybe not password-protect the drive, but maybe use NTFS on it? It wouldn't
stop someone from reading it on a Linux or DOS machine, unless you also used
Encrypted File System, but it would work.

There are a few third-party encryption tools (like PGP) that can encrypt and
decrypt files on FAT and FAT32 drives, and there's even a PGP virtual drive
that's been available since PGP 7.

What's the official word on using the NTFS file system with USB mass storage
devices? I've heard varying responses to this question, and my own
experience is actual hard drives in USB cages can use NTFS, where most USB
flash devices cannot.

--
PGP key (0x0AFA039E): <http://www.pan-am.ca/consulting@pan-am.ca.asc>
Prevent problems before they happen and help others avoid bad design.
<http://www.pan-am.ca/antiwindowscatalog/>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin (More info?)

Gordon Fecyk wrote:
>>Is there a way to password protect USB Flash Dives?
>
>
> Maybe not password-protect the drive, but maybe use NTFS on it? It wouldn't
> stop someone from reading it on a Linux or DOS machine, unless you also used
> Encrypted File System, but it would work.
>
> There are a few third-party encryption tools (like PGP) that can encrypt and
> decrypt files on FAT and FAT32 drives, and there's even a PGP virtual drive
> that's been available since PGP 7.
>
> What's the official word on using the NTFS file system with USB mass storage
> devices? I've heard varying responses to this question, and my own
> experience is actual hard drives in USB cages can use NTFS, where most USB
> flash devices cannot.
>
I see two main reasons not to use NTFS on a flash memory USB drive.

The first is the relatively big data structures required by NTFS that
will consume quite a few megabytes of your flash drive.

The second is that flash memory can only be written to in large (64k)
blocks using an erase/rewrite logic. These blocks can only be written a
limited number of times (10000?) before they become unwritable. To
increase flash memory lifetime USB drives need to optimize write
operations to the memory and many do it by forcing the file system to
FAT and optimize based on it.