External Drive Encryption

Is there a way to encrypt an external hard drive so that i can move files back and forth onto the hard drive while needing a password to access it? Ive tried using truecrypt's volume creation, but that didnt seem to work.

 

Anyone know?

 

I set a password in Bios on my extra drives. I 'think" they have to be physically in the laptop and not just the enclosure through USB for the bios to be able to password protect the drive

Not exactly encyrption but it does protect your data by locking the drive, provided you are using 2.5" drives that you can put in the laptop

 

No, its an external

 

Truecrypt should work, unless you want the drive to be completely inaccessible without authorisation.

zx81 mentioned the ATA security password feature, I haven't seen any support for this in external drives either.

There are some external drives that are (un)locked via USB dongle or RFID key fob, but you probably shouldn't trust advertising too much and better do some research before buying one.

 

Well yea id like that, but if thats not doable then is there a way i can create something such as an encrypted folder or partition through truecrypt? I tried making a file container which just showed up as an unrecognizable file type(Which was about 300GBs in size because thats the size of my external).

 

TC supports both partitions/entire drives and file containers in existing file systems. If you've created a file container, open the TC GUI, select an unused drive letter, click "Select File..." and browse to your container file and open it. Enter your password and a new drive should pop up in Windows Explorer.
If you rename your container file to have a .tc file extension and checked the "Register .tc file extension" option during installation, you can also just double click on the container file.

This really is basic stuff covered by the documentation, please make sure to read it thoroughly. Or keep another copy on an unencrypted drive

 

Well I did read the "basic stuff covered by the documentation" which can be found in the following link

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=tutorial

And yes i read all the pages but im still stuck in the same boat. When i finish, i get mounted drives that are empty (0kb). One thing i noticed though is that the file in the tutorial has an actual symbol (see page 4) while mine is an unrecognized filetype (it asks for a program to use). I tried reinstalling Truecrypt making sure i have the .tc file extension ticked but i still have the same result.

 

Ok, nvm i fixed it; all i did was add the .tc extension at the end of the file name.