Saturday, November 21, 2009

Learning How To Password Protect USB Drive Systems

By Trevor Johnson

Eventually, knowing how to password protect USB drive components will become important for anybody who wants to carry his or her PC around but is concerned about maybe losing it or having others plug it into another computer and then access confidential files or other folders that are important. This risk can be avoided or eliminated by following a few simple steps password protect the USB drive.

The first thing to ensure is that whatever USB drive you intend on protecting via a password and encryption is empty. Once you've made sure of that, take the software program you've found -- because it's a bit inconvenient to go in and manually encrypt and password protect each file on the USB drive -- and then download the program to the USB. Click "select device" and then click "OK."

After that, you'll need to then click "next" as a way of examining all of the different encryption methods that the software will present for your use. You will have a certain amount of volume or space available on the USB drive and will need to accept that space and then create a password. Try to come up with a password that is both easy to remember yet extremely difficult to decipher.

Upon completion of the above steps, you will be asked by the software to begin a random encryption at one point or another within a data point. Select "format" and then highlight drive parameters for the USB drive so that formatting can begin. Don't forget to transfer any data that is on the drive at this point over to your PC's hard drive if you don't want to lose it.

Once all of that has been done, it's a matter of using the software program you have found to engage in the password protection and clicking on "mount." Once you have done that you'll need to enter your password. After you've done the password entry, you will see that the device will be showing in MS Explorer. Just click "dismount" and remove the drive.

The drive is now password protected and will also be encrypted and therefore very hard to hack. Additionally, nobody will be able to take your USB drive and easily examine any of the data you have stored on it. Keep in mind, though, that no drive is 100% safe from a concerted cracking effort, though encrypting and password protecting it will make that effort extremely difficult.

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