Is Your Flash Drive a Liability?
Wednesday, 10 December 2008 14:46
It happened again. This time I lost two of them. Two USB flashdrives and a set of keys, all on one keychain. Has this happened to you? If you use a flash drive, it's bound to happen at some point. It's not a good feelling wondering what files were on that flash drive. Fortunately for me, this time my drives were encrypted. Before you are faced with this situation, you should encypt your flash drives too. Here's how:
1. Download the open source encryption software TrueCrypt.
2. Install TrueCrypt on your computer.
3. Plug in you USB flash drive.
4. Launch TrueCrypt.exe from your computer.
5. Under the Tools menu, click 'Traveler Disk Setup...''
6. Click the Browse button and browse to your flash drive, click OK, click create.
This will create a folder called TrueCrypt in the root directory of your flash drive.
7. Click 'Create Volume' on the TrueCrypt screen. This will launch the volume creation wizard.
8. Make sure the option for 'Create a file container' is selected and click next.
9. Choose 'Standard TrueCrypt Volume' and click next.
10. Click 'Select File', browse to you flash drive, enter a name for your container, I called mine files, and click save.
11. Click next, click next again.
12. Here you will enter the size of your data file. You should subtract a little space from the reported free space and enter in the number you come up with. This will depend on the size of your flash drive. I left about 100MB unencrypted. Click next when done.
13. Enter your password and click next.
14. Move your mouse around in the window for a minute or two (this increases the strength of the encryption) and click format.
15. Once the format has been completed, you can exit the program. You now have an encrypted data container on your flash drive.
To use the flash drive:
1. Plug it in, browse to the TrueCrypt folder and run TrueCrypt.exe.
2. Under volume click 'Select File..', browse to your data container and click open.
3. Select the drive letter you would like to use and click 'Mount'. You will be prompted for your password. Enter it and click OK.
4. Your data container can now be accesses through the drive letter you chose above.
5. When are finished with your drive, run TrueCrypt.exe again and click 'Dismount All'.
It may seem like a lot of steps, but it's really not the complicated. Doing this could save you a lot of headaches, time and money in the future.
