Password Protect a USB Flash Disk / Portable Hard Drive

Here are two applications which could password protect your USB flash disk or portable hard drive with and without administrator rights.

USB flash disks and portable hard drives are already a part of our modern lives. Almost everyone has a USB flash disk and most people are thinking of buying a portable hard drive nowadays. With that, the question I often get about them is how do you password protect a USB flash disk or portable hard drive?

Why is It Important to Password Protect your USB Flash Disk or Portable Hard Disk?

You carry your USB flash drive or portable hard disk with you all the time. Most of us put sensitive information and files in there that can be used against us or that we simply don’t want others to see. If you lose the flash disk, you risk other people seeing or accessing your sensitive files.

How to Password Protect a USB Flash Disk or Portable Hard Disk?

The methods in password protection of flash disks or portable hard disks have long been an issue. There are many applications which can password protect flash disks. However, most of them require that the logged on user has administrator rights – or the capability to create, modify, delete, install, or run any file on the computer.

So what if a computer doesn’t have administration rights and the flash disk or portable hard drive has a password protection software/application in it? Some applications lock the files inside the USB – meaning it can’t be accessed. Some however, offer no protection at all. All the files are accessible.

I can recommend two applications which you can use.

1. Rohos Mini Drive

Rohos Mini Drive is an application which creates a hidden and encrypted partition in a USB flash disk. The good thing about Rohos Mini Drive is that you can access your files even without administrator rights/privileges. However, the size limit of the files that you can password protect is 2GB.

To setup your flash disk or portable hard drive just choose Setup USB Key

 

Then insert your USB flash disk and choose the flash disk’s drive letter, in our case its J:. Set the password as well.

 

Once it finishes making an encrypted partition in your hard drive, you can insert it in any computer (even without administrator rights) and you just need to run Rohos mini.exe and enter the password you have set.

 

A new drive letter would appear outside of the flash disk (like it was a different drive) and you can now access or put your files there.

Note: The download link of Rohos Mini Drive is already indicated above. If you want to protect more than 495 MB of data, I suggest that you purchase Rohos Disk Encryption which is also in their site.

 

2. TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is also an application which can be used for protection of flash disks. To password protect flash disks or portable hard drives, just choose Extract.

 

You can then go to Tools -> Traveler Disk Setup

 

And from there you would be able to put TrueCrypt in your portable media and then protect your files.

Its main drawback however, is that the computer in which you would be inserting the flash disk or portable hard drive into should have administrator rights.

There you have it. I hope I have helped you in how to password protect a USB flash disk or portable hard drive.