External USB Hard Drive with password?

[ft_pt]

Hey guys, how are you?
I have a very simple question.. i have an USB External HDD and i wanted to protect it with a password, like everytime i plug it into a computer it asks me a password to see it's content. Do any of you know how to do this? I've been searching lots of software (like truecrypt etc) but those ones need to be installed on the machine, i don't want that... i want a system like those USB PENS with U3. Everytime i plug the PEN it asks the password. I dont need to encrypt data, just the password... and freeware would be great.

 

[nullifier]

Have you tried looking in your BIOS to see if you can use password-protection for your external hard drive? I've used this before for internal hard drives, but never for an external.

I believe it does write the password in a low-level sector on the drive itself, but I'm not 100% if it would be able to unlock in another machine - never tried that. If it doesn't use some type of symmetrical shared key between the HD and the BIOS, I think it could work for you, otherwise it probably isn't the solution you're looking for.

Disclaimer: HDs password protected in this way are very difficult to circumvent if the password is forgotten or lost since it is not software-based, so be careful.

 

[hang-the-9]

Try this, $20 for a standard version http://www.keynesis.com/downloads/get-demo.shtml

Aside from software like that, full disk of file encryption is the other way.

 

[ft_pt]

Nullifier, i thought of that but i guess the password on BIOS won't apply in windows environment. It would work on my computer, but if i plugged the hdd on another computer my guess is it wont work. i'm gonna try out the keynesis soft. thanks for your replys mates.

 

[ft_pt]

i really think this is a very simple situation that no software company cover it completely on hard drives. SanDisk has a very simple tool called U3 that does this on USB-PENS..but not on HDD.

 

[nullifier]

Cheers, good luck!

 

[ft_pt]

lockngo looks great!exactly what i wanted... but a bit expensive! trying to lookout for a crack