How to Protect Your Flash Drive Data with TrueCrypt

Are worry about your confidential files which is you are always carrying on your flash drive? here is the solution.

With the help of TrueCrypt, you can easily protect the data stored your flash drive so that if it is lost or stolen, nobody will be able to get to your sensitive files.

Creating a TrueCrypt Volume

Plug in the flash drive you want to protect data on copy any data you want to protect onto a folder on your hard disk. We will move them to the encrypted volume once we are done.

The process of creating an encrypted file container for a flash drive is no different from the normal TrueCrypt process. If you are familiar with how to do this already, you can skip this section or just scroll through it for a quick refresher.

From the Tools menu, select Volume Creation Wizard.

Select the option to Create an encrypted file container.

We do not want to select the option to encrypt a non-system partition/drive because this would prevent us from loading the files required to mount a TrueCrypt volume on our flash drive. This would mean the computer we plug our flash drive into would have to already have TrueCrypt installed in order to access our data.

Select the option to create a Standard TrueCrypt volume.

Set the destination to a file located on your flash drive.

Set your encryption options. The default values will do nicely.

Set the size for the encrypted volume. Make sure you leave at least 10 MB free so there is room for the TrueCrypt files required for mounting and dismounting the volume.

Set a strong password.

Wait patiently while the TrueCrypt volume is created.

Loading the TrueCrypt Binary Files on Your Flash Drive

In order to access your encrypted volume on systems which do not have TrueCrypt loaded, you must load the required binary files needed to mount the container on the host system. Thankfully, TrueCrypt has a function which makes this easy.

From the Tools menu, select Traveler Disk Setup.

We will come back to what this notice means a bit later.

Browse to the drive letter of your flash drive under the File Settings.

Under AutoRun Configuration, select the option to Auto-mount the TrueCrypt volume and then set the following options:

• Enter the file name only of the TrueCrypt volume file.
• Select First available as the drive letter.
• Select the option Open Explorer window for mounted volume.

Create traveler disk with the set options.

This is an important notice.

In order for TrueCrypt to mount a volume on a host system, one of the following conditions must be met:

1. TrueCrypt must be installed natively on the host system already.
2. You must have administrative rights on the host system.

The reason you need administrative rights if TrueCrypt is not installed natively is due to the requirement that a system driver must be loaded on the host system in order to mount the encrypted volume. Since only administrators can load and unload system drivers, you must have this level of access or you will not be able to mount the TrueCrypt driver.

On the other hand, if the driver is already present on the host (i.e. TrueCrypt is installed natively), you should be able to mount your encrypted driver with normal user level access.

Once the traveler disk setup is complete, you should see your flash drive shows with a TrueCrypt icon in Windows Explorer.

Easily Opening the TrueCrypt Volume on the Host Machine

Once you have configured your flash drive as a TrueCrypt Traveler Disk, opening the contents in Windows Explorer should look something like the screen below.

Notice there is an autorun.inf file which was created during the setup. Getting back to the message box we said we would discuss later, this is intended to run automatically when the flash drive is plugged into the host machine, however most Windows machines have the AutoRun option disabled (as they should), so this will never execute. Because of this, you will have to mount and dismount your TrueCrypt volume manually.

Of course, doing it manually isn’t acceptable so with a couple of batch scripts we can easily mount and dismount the TrueCrypt volume with a double-click.

Open the autorun.inf file in Notepad and copy the text following the line which begins with “open=”.

Create a new text file called MountTC.bat and paste what you previously copied into this file. When run, this batch file will mount the TrueCrypt volume stored on the flash drive onto the host system.

Back in the autorun.inf file, copy the text following the line which begins with “shell\dismount\command=”.

Create a new text file called DismountTC.bat and paste what you previously copied into this file. When run, this batch file will dismount all the TrueCrypt volumes on the host system.

When finished, you should see the two batch files we created in your flash drive.

Opening the TrueCrypt Volume

After you plug in the flash drive to the host machine if the TrueCrypt volume does not attempt to mount itself automatically, simply run the MountTC.bat file. Remember, TrueCrypt must be natively installed or you have to have administrative rights on the host machine. You will get a UAC prompt if TrueCrypt is not natively installed, so confirm you want to continue.

Enter your password for the TrueCrypt volume.

Your volume will be mounted and your encrypted files will now appear.

Copy any files you want to protect inside of your TrueCrypt volume and nobody will be able to access them without the password.

Once you are finished, simply run the DismountTC.bat file and your TrueCrypt volume will be gracefully dismounted.

Important Security Notice

It is important to understand that while your files are encrypted on the flash drive, once you mount the TrueCrypt volume on the host machine, they are at the mercy of this machine. As a result, you should be careful where you decide to access your files.

 

Download TrueCrypt

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How to change your Hard Drive or Flash Drive file system from FAT32 to NTFS Format

You may face that you can’t copy large files to you external hard drive or flash drive even if there is many free space. So how do you fix that?

The FAT32 file system, which most external drives and flash drives are still using, can’t handle files larger than about 4 GB in size—which means most full-length movies and anything really large, like a virtual machine. If you do try and copy a file, you will get an error just like below.

It’s worth noting that FAT32 works just fine on just about any operating system, but NTFS is usually read-only on Linux and Mac OS X.

Option 1: Convert the File System Directly

If you have already copy huge sized of files on the drive and don’t have the free space to move them somewhere, you can convert the file system directly from FAT32 to NTFS. Just open up an Administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator, and then you can type convert /? to see the syntax for the convert command.

In our example, the drive letter is G: so the command we’d use is this:

convert G: /FS:NTFS

The conversion process might take a while, especially if you’ve got a really large drive.

You are done

Option 2: Reformat the Drive

If you don’t have a ton of data on the drive, the best bet is to copy any data from the drive to somewhere else, reformat the drive, and then copy the data back.

Right-click on the drive and choose Format.

And then select NTFS in the file system drop-down.

Finish the format, and copy your data back.

You are done 

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HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool  will format any USB flash drive, with your choice of FAT, FAT32, or NTFS partition types.Additionally, the drive can be made bootable by using system files from Windows 98 startup-disks.

By default on USB flash file system of FAT32, because of what files measuring more than 2 Gb writing down is not possible. By the program HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool it is possible to change the file system of your flash on NTFS.It has a graphical interface very similar to that of the Windows format tool.

Features

• Allows creation of a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB.
• Fixes installation issue where installation process stopped after the earlier version of software was uninstalled and the new software was not automatically installed. The installation process now restarts automatically to install the new software after uninstalling the older version

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool  Or http://www.mediafire.com/?trnhjngzwtz | 1.97MB | Freeware |OS:Windows 2K/XP

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How to encrypt your USB flash drive

USB flash drives are great because they are really cheap and you can conveniently move data between computers. The only problem is when you store sensitive data on a USB drive and it gets lost or stolen!

Most people are intimidated by the words “encryption” because it involves fancy algorithms and names like “WPA, EFS, SHA1, etc”. However, there’s a very easy way to encrypt a USB drive in Windows.

We will use Windows Encrypting File System to create an encrypted folder on a thumb drive that only one user account on one computer can read.

Step 1 – Format USB drive in NTFS format

Firstly, you have to make sure the USB drive is formatted in NTFS format. Most USB drives are formatted in FAT16 or FAT32 format, which does not support encryption at all.

Step 3 – Create an Encrypted Folder

Ok, now that your USB drive is in NTFS format and all the data has been erased, we can setup a folder that will contain all the encrypted data.

What I like about this method is that you can store all the sensitive files in the encrypted folder, but store other files normally outside the folder. That way, you can still pop the USB drive into someone else’s computer and they can view all the files not in the encrypted folder.

Go to My Computer, open the flash drive, right-click and choose New Folder. Name the folder anything you want, but try not to make it obvious that it has sensitive data otherwise people might be more inclined to try and get in.

Now right-click on the new folder and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced button in the Attributes section.

Now check the Encrypt contents to secure data box. Click OK and click OK again to close out the dialogs.

Now you’ll see the folder is in green, which means the data is encrypted. That’s it! Now you have a folder on your USB drive that is fully encrypted and viewable only by your user account on that one computer.

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Connecting Two PCs Using a USB-USB Cable

A very easy way to connect two PCs is using a USB-USB cable. Connecting two PCs with a cable like this you can transfer files from one PC to another, and even build a small network and share your Internet connection with a second PC. In this tutorial we will explain you how to connect two PCs using a cable like this.

The first thing you should be aware of is that there are several different kinds of USB-USB cables on the market. The one used to connect two PCs is called “bridged” (or “USB networking cable”), because it has a small electronic circuit in the middle allowing the two PCs to talk to each other. There are the so-called A/A USB cables that, in spite of having two standard USB connectors at each end, don’t have a bridge chip and cannot be used to connect two PCs. In fact, if you use an A/A USB cable you can burn the USB ports of your computers or even their power supplies. So, these A/A USB cables are completely useless. A/B USB cables are used to connect your computer to peripherals such as printers and scanners, so they also won’t fit your needs.

USB-USB bridged cable

As for speed, the bridge chip can be USB 1.1 (12 Mbps) or USB 2.0 (480 Mbps). Of course we suggest you to buy a USB 2.0 bridged cable, because of its very high-speed. Just to remember, the standard Ethernet network works at 100 Mps, so the USB 2.0 cable will provide you a transfer rate almost five times higher than a standard network connection.

We decided to open the bridge located on the middle of our cable just to show you that this kind of cable really has a bridge chip, and that’s why it is more expensive than a simple A/A USB cable that doesn’t have any circuit at all.

Bridge chip used in our cable

Now that you know the kind of cable that you should buy, let’s talk about its installation.

Here I will give a brief installation method and also a explained one.

So lets start with the brief :-

Step 1>Turn on both of the computers. Log in to Windows using an account with administrator privileges.

Step 2>Insert one end of the USB bridge cable into a USB slot on one computer, and the other end of the bridge into the second computer.

Step 3>Install the driver software for the USB bridge cable when the computers prompt you to do so. If you do not have driver software for the USB bridge cable, you may be able to download it from the cable manufacturer.

Step 4>Choose to install the USB bridge cable either as a link adapter or a network adapter. If you install it as a link adapter, you will only be able to transfer files back and forth. If you install it as a network adapter, you will have full network functionality.

Step 5>Complete the software installation. Your two computers should now be connected.

That’s it in brief!

——————–

Ok, Here we start with more details:-

Those cable can work in two modes: link mode and network mode. On link mode, it will work just like the very old “lap link” cables, i.e. it comes with a software where you can select files and simply drag and drop them to where you want to move or copy them to or from the remote computer. If you just want to copy files, that’s the mode we recommend you to use, because it is easier and quicker to install and use.

On network mode, you will create a small network between two computers. After creating this network you can share folders, printers and Internet access. This mode is recommended if besides copying files you want to have access to a printer located on the other computer (or any other computer on the network, if this computer is connected to a network) or want to have Internet access.

The cable installation process will depend on the cable manufacturer. You will have to install the programs and drivers that come with the cable on a CD-ROM. This procedure must be performed on both computers, with the cable not installed.

So, don’t install the cable yet, leave it away from the computers.

Some manufacturers ship two different setup files, one for the link mode and another for the network mode. Other manufacturers ship just one setup file valid for both modes. Then you need to select the mode you want to use during the installation or inside the transfer program that will be installed.

Choosing the mode during installation

Choosing the mode inside the transfer program

After you have installed the corresponding drivers (link mode or network mode), you should install the cable on the computer. Windows will recognize it and install the correct drivers.

If you installed the program and drivers with the cable attached to the computer, you should remove it from your computer and install it again. This will make Windows to recognized it and install its drivers.

You should repeat this process for the other computer now.

If you want to change the mode your cable is working under, you should run the setup program for the other mode or selecting the mode change on the transfer program, depending on the cable model. This should be without your cable attached to your computer. After changing the mode, reinstall the cable and the system will recognize it automatically. If you run the setup program or changed the mode with the cable attached, simply remove the cable from your computer and install it again to force Windows to install the correct drivers (the drivers used on link mode and network mode are different). You should repeat this process for the other computer.

Now that you cable is installed, let’s see how to use it on both modes.

Link Mode

As we mentioned, the link mode is the easiest and fastest way to connect two PCs using your USB cable for transferring files. If you want to have Internet access and/or have printer access, you should go to network mode.

After installing the cable as describe on the previous page, you should check if the cable is correctly installed on Device Manager (right click My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Device Manager). It should be listed under “Universal Serial Bus controllers”, see Figure 6 (our cable is listed as “Hi-Speed USB Bridge Cable”, but your cable can use a slight different name, depending on the manufacturer).

Transfer program

Network Mode

As we mentioned, under network mode the computers will be linked in a small network, and the connection will work just like a network. This mode allows you to share the Internet connection, if available on one of the computers.

After installing the cable as describe before, you should check if the cable is correctly installed as a network adapter on Device Manager (right click My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Device Manager). It should be listed under “Network adapters”, see Figure 8 (our cable is listed as “Hi-Speed USB-USB Network Adapter”, but your cable can use a slight different name, depending on the manufacturer).

USB-USB cable correctly installed using network mode

The next step is to configure both computers to use the USB cable as a network adapter.

First you have to configure the computer that has access to the Internet. On this computer, open Network Connections (Start, Settings, Network Connections). You will see there the network adapters located on your computer. In our case, “Local Area Connection” was the network adapter that connected our PC to the Internet (to our broadband router) and “Local Area Connection 2” was the USB-USB cable.

Network connections

Right click on the network card that is connecting your PC to the Internet (“Local Area Connection”, in our case), choose Properties and, on the window that will show up, click on Advanced tab. There, check the box “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”. Depending on your Windows XP version, there will be a drop-down menu called “Home networking connection”, where you should select the USB cable connection (“Local Area Connection 2”, in our case).

Enabling Internet sharing

After you have done this configuration, you must restart your computer. After restarting it, everything should be working just fine. Try browsing the net from the other computer to see if everything is running fine.

To share files and printers, you should read our tutorial How to Share Folders and Printers on Your Network to see how this can be done. If you are not using a broadband router on the computer that has the Internet connection, you should be very careful, because sharing its folders can allow anyone on the Internet to have access to your files. Read more about this on our tutorial Protecting Your Computer Against Invasions. In this tutorial you will find some tips for preventing a hacker to have access to your files.

If the remote computer cannot access the Internet, check if the USB cable is configured to get an IP address automatically from the network. Go to Start menu, Settings, Network Connections, right click the cable connection (“Local Area Connection 2”, in our case), select Properties and then, on the window that will appear, double click on “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)”. Both two options available on the screen that will show up must be set on “automatically”, as shown on Figure 11. Both computers should be configured this way.

TCP/IP configuration must be set to automatic on both computers

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