Safe use of external hard disk

ziipp · 26 Feb 2014

What is the safest way to protect data on an external hard drive, when using the hard drive on computers other than your own.

Is there a good recommended software I can use to encrypt my hard drive and have it available to be decrypted on another computer and to keep all the encryption software on the same drive?

I have heard of some simple security programs that come with some hard drives, but I'm looking for an open source or similar solution that is well documented in terms of security.

I would like to take a 1 terabyte hard drive around to different places and I want to protect my information.

My home computer is Windows 7 Professional and I will use windows computers elsewhere also. What kind of portable software is available?

Or ... did I answer my question. Is the best bet, to simply encrypt files with something like pgp?

richc46 · 26 Feb 2014

Welcome
I am not one of the security people, but I have learned a trick and use it myself. If possible turn off the Hard Drive at night. Those creeps out there writing, virus and trying to steal information often work at night, because you are probably asleep and will not notice unusual activity on your computer. In addition if you turn off the hard drive at night, and when not in use, less chance that a virus caught will spread to the hard drive, when you initially catch it.

user31 · 26 Feb 2014

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux , Truecrypt is a perfect example of this kind of opensource software. You can make virtual space and assign passwords. Give it a look :) .

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/

cottonball · 26 Feb 2014

Welcome to the forum, ziipp!

For your external hard drive, one option is the following:

Please download UsbFix (from: El Desaparecido)

Save to the Desktop!

Connect your external data sources to your PC (external hard drive, USB pen drive, etc...) without opening them.
Right-click the downloaded file and select: Run as Administrator
At the program's main console, select: Vaccinate

By vaccinating the USB devices that you connect to your computer you can prevent them from becoming infected when connecting to computers that are not vaccinated.