subject: USB Hard Drive Security [print this page] USB hard drive security may not be the first thing that springs to your mind when you're copying files from your main computer onto your flash drive. But maybe it should be. After all, if it's so easy to transfer files onto your USB stick, it's also easy to transfer files back from it. Which is good if it's you that's doing the transferring but a lot less good if you happen to mislay your USB pen drive.
So, what can you do to make your USB hard drive more secure?
Obviously, you can't lock it away in a safe as that defeats the object of being able to quickly and easily copy or move files between your computers.
But fortunately you can do something similar...
The best way to protect your USB hard drive and make it more secure is to use password protection.
How you go about this can be difficult - you can get to grips with the built-in security in Windows and grant different permissions to different users. Which is fine if you have the time and patience to work through the things that Windows calls help files but most of the rest of us would consider more as hinderance.
Or you can get hold of some software that will quickly and easily password protect either some or all your files on your flash drive.
Whilst there is some free software available, you're never quite sure how well it works or whether the author has built in some kind of spyware or other malware into the application. They probably haven't but there's always a nagging doubt at the back of your mind.
The best choice to my mind is to use a readily available piece of USB hard drive security software. It's cheap to buy and is a one off purchase, no matter how many USB drives you use it on. And you've got the peace of mind that it's been commercially produced and should be free of any infections or other issues.
