Portable encryption software for external hard drive?

USN Brat

Is there a portable piece of software that encrypts your entire external hard drive? (Or at least password protects it) I want to be able to use it on all computers that I use, but be prompted to enter a password in order to access the content.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer
"TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc). "

What portable hard drive would you recommend (preferably 1TB)?

Jordan

I am looking into buying a portable hard drive. I study Graphic Design at college and a Hard drive would be useful. I currently have a USB which is only 4GB which I feel won't be enough.

I have some factors to consider

Reliability: Fast and easy to use and doesn't experience regular problems.

Portability: Easy to travel with.

Durability/Lasting factor: Doesn't brake easily and lasts for a long time

Memory: As I said before preferably a 1TB (3.0 USB hard drive)

Price: I am looking around the price of £50-£100 for an external hard drive.

I have had so many mixed reviews on external hard drives I'm finding it difficult to make a firm decision. All Answers will be appreciated but the best answer will be the one that best fits my criteria :D

Answer
iomega is very reliable. it also has a warranty that comes with it (every external hard drive does).

Many students at my school get WD (Western Digital) because it's cheaper, but many of them had issue with it (it's not connecting, it crashes easily, etc. etc.)

Iomega works well. It doesn't overheat like some of Seagate does.

Seagate overheats and not many student use it.

G (sold at Mac stores) have pretty good ratings. But I don't know of many people who have this, and not many ratings online (last time I checked).

Online at tech forums, people rate and crit which external hard drives works best and is most reliable. You can also check Best Buy and compare each hard drive with one another. You should also go into the hard drive company's website/forums which will most likely have buyer's ratings. You should check those.

When I did that, Iomega had best ratings. It also runs on Firewire, which is far faster than regular USB which most hard drives still rely on. When you work with large files, it's best to have firewire. Saves you time.

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About portable external Hard Drive ?

Chelseafc

Western Digital,
Seagate
Hitachi
Iomega
Verbatim
Toshiba
G-Technology
Clickfree
Data Robotics
HP
LaCie
Aleratec
ClickFree
Pogoplug

Which one do you think is good brand for external hard drive.
Thank You,

Answer
Western Digital and Seagate have been making hard drives for a really long time. I've had 2 Western Digitals and never had any problems with them. I suspect Seagate is as good.

I got a 500gb Western Digital on black Friday for $30. Very cool.

make a portable hard drive?

add.thebad

i want to buy a cheep hard drive and a cheep enclosure to make a cheep portable hard drive but dont know which ones to buy e.g size, SATA, IDE

what i want is a portable hard drive i can connect and power by usb so what type do i need?

thanks for any help

Answer
any laptop drive sata or ide (SATA faster) and an usb enclosure here

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Recs=10&Nav=|c:2777|lp:0.01:hp:24.99|&Sort=4

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What are the common problems with portable hard drive?

Kshatriya

I mean when it starts to show problems (e.g. getting too much hot, hang-up), what are the usual problems we face?

Answer
Place too many files on the hard disk. Then it will hang. Other probable cause is the wire. If your hard drive doesn't come on a integrated USB. Then the wiring may become a problem because of repeated unplug and re-plug. And if your files inside your drive is not arrange or put it on a folder. There's a chance that it will catch a virus. Virus like the 'recycler' folder. Unless you delete this folder whenever you connect your drive to the pc. This acts as a catalyst for a computer virus rendering it unable to access you drive. It will display "This drive is not formatted. Do you want to reformat?" dialog.

160 GB Western Digital Passport Portable Hard Drive??

Step into

I just bought one and installed it. In "My Computer" where you can click on your drives to see their info, it says the portable hard drive only has 149 GB capacity, not 160. Is this normal? I just bought it and all that is on there so far is my bookmarks (hardly 11 G worth.) Thanks

Answer
its because the drive has information on it that it needs to process... they also have volume's and auto backup options that take up room on them

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Portable encryption software for external hard drive?

USN Brat

Is there a portable piece of software that encrypts your entire external hard drive? (Or at least password protects it) I want to be able to use it on all computers that I use, but be prompted to enter a password in order to access the content.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer
"TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc). "

What portable hard drive would you recommend (preferably 1TB)?

Jordan

I am looking into buying a portable hard drive. I study Graphic Design at college and a Hard drive would be useful. I currently have a USB which is only 4GB which I feel won't be enough.

I have some factors to consider

Reliability: Fast and easy to use and doesn't experience regular problems.

Portability: Easy to travel with.

Durability/Lasting factor: Doesn't brake easily and lasts for a long time

Memory: As I said before preferably a 1TB (3.0 USB hard drive)

Price: I am looking around the price of £50-£100 for an external hard drive.

I have had so many mixed reviews on external hard drives I'm finding it difficult to make a firm decision. All Answers will be appreciated but the best answer will be the one that best fits my criteria :D

Answer
iomega is very reliable. it also has a warranty that comes with it (every external hard drive does).

Many students at my school get WD (Western Digital) because it's cheaper, but many of them had issue with it (it's not connecting, it crashes easily, etc. etc.)

Iomega works well. It doesn't overheat like some of Seagate does.

Seagate overheats and not many student use it.

G (sold at Mac stores) have pretty good ratings. But I don't know of many people who have this, and not many ratings online (last time I checked).

Online at tech forums, people rate and crit which external hard drives works best and is most reliable. You can also check Best Buy and compare each hard drive with one another. You should also go into the hard drive company's website/forums which will most likely have buyer's ratings. You should check those.

When I did that, Iomega had best ratings. It also runs on Firewire, which is far faster than regular USB which most hard drives still rely on. When you work with large files, it's best to have firewire. Saves you time.

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Is There a Wii Black Ops ISO compressed to fit in a 4G USB Drive?

g portable hard drives image

Sakura323

My wii dvd drive broke or something , but i had another alternative and its to run iso on a portable hard drive but all i had was a 4 G USB and i manage to put some games there because they were like 1.5 g:nevertheless, does any one know were i can find Black Ops ISO to fit on a 4 G USB DRIVE?

Answer
You can't play it if its compressed and not the original size. Find another USB drive bigger than 4 GB or get an SD or SDHC card (16 or 32 GB) or get a hard drive from Seagate or another manufacturer.

What should I save before I wipe my hard drive?

Cassidy

I'm going to wipe my hard drive of my hp pavillion laptop today. I have a portable hard drive. I've saved my Documents, music, Photos, Videos, and Favorites onto it.
I think I have everything of upmost importance, but I'm not sure! any suggestions? Any programs that I CAN save?

Answer
if your just wiping your laptop and portable hard drive,no need to worry about backing-up your data,but that is the best thing to do.just don't let moisture seep into your portable hard drive or laptop.avoid spraying or dousing water on both of your gadgets.also avoid using baby wipes as they contain a lot of water.just wipe your gadgets with a damp cloth.do not use cleaners on your laptop(e.g. bleach,detergent)as this may make your gadgets malfunction.

if you have time,burn your files to a dvd or blu-ray.and don't forget to unplug your laptop before wiping to avoid electrocution.

hope this helps!

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How do I back up software on my computer to my portable hard drive?

g portable hard drives image

jkvbmc

I recently bought a Western Digital 160g portable hard drive and I want to back up some of the most important programs on my computers hard drive to my portable drive in case my computer crashes, how do I do that?

Answer
Plug it in first then open explorer.
It should then show as an extra drive on the list. e.g. External drive (D:).
Now choose a program folder you want to keep and click, hold and drag it to the external drive.
It will not remove the original folder. It will make a copy on the new drive.
That's the easy bit but there's a big but.
A lot of programs when they are installed scatter files around the computer.
If this is the case with a program you are backing up it won't work on another computer because some of the files are missing. You would need to have the original installation file. That's a lesson I learnt the hard way. The only way you can check is to try running it from another computer. If you run it from the external drive while it's still connected to your host computer it will run because it finds the needed files on the internal drive.
Some programs are self contained and have all the files they need to run.
At the very least you should also back up all the files you have self generated such as text, graphics, photo's, music etc. You're thinking ahead so I reckon you've already thought of that.
What I do now is each time I download a new program I put a copy on the external before installing it. Once I've got enough to make it worthwhile I burn them to disk. Double protection!

Can a portable hard drive be formatted as a bootable USB?

rubixmaste

I know that Flash USB's are capable of being formatted into USB's that the computer can boot from the BIOS, but can the same be done with a Portable hard drive such as one from Western Digital (the passport types) ? And if so, will it completely work?

Thanks in advance!

Answer
yes, it will work perfectly. but there are procedures to be done. follow the steps

** creating a windows vista/7 bootable USB drive

* this can only be done using machines with vista or 7

* run command prompt as administrator

c:\diskpart

DISKPART> list disk

DISKPART> select disk 1 (assuming usb drive is disk 1)

DISKPART> clean

DISKPART> create partition primary

DISKPART> select partition 1

DISKPART> active

DISKPART> format fs=NTFS (this will format the usb drive)

DISKPART> assign

DISKPART> exit (this will exit diskpart command)

* insert windows vista/7 into ODD

c:\cd d:\boot

c:\boot\bootsect /nt60 g: (assuming usb drive is named g:)

* use windows explorer to copy all windows vista/7 files and folders from CD

* restart PC to be configured and locate BIOS setup & change the boot sequence to USB drive as priority

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There is a BIG RED X on my G: portable hard drive, how do i remove it?

g portable hard drives image

Josenoe V

I got a new portable hard drive and now it shows a big red x on it. I provided a picture from imageshack to show you.
But yeah, theres that big x, and the icon looks like a network folder.

Not that im running Vista 64bit but also, this harddrive used to be in a laptop but i bought an external case and now i use it as a portable device.

Answer
You should wipe the hard disk clean first and then reformat it.

Use DBAN to wipe it, then Vista to reformat it.

http://www.dban.org

Read the instructions and then download and run

How do I change the root letter of my portable hard drive from G to F in Windows XP?

Mike

I plugged my portable hard drives in a different order and it automatically assigned them different letters. Now my programs are looking in the wrong places for files. How do I manually assign drive letters?

Answer
I hate no talent clowns on here... changing your drive letter is really easy.

-right click "My Computer"
-click "manage"
-click "disk management" under "storage"
-right click on the drive you want to change
-click "change drive letter and path"
-click "change"
-change the drive letter

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Help with portable hard drive and lost files?

g portable hard drives image

jennifer

I recently added some files to a portable hard drive, a "Disk Go Edge". After loading the files I can not access them. When I try to go to access the hard drive I get a message that says "disk drive g is not formatted". It was working fine a couple of days ago and now it won't. The hard drive has very important and expensive files on it. What can I do if anything to retrieve the files?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
It's usually not cheap or fast, but there are programs you can download to recover files that were accidentally lost/deleted. They cost a lot and take forever (sometimes days), but can recover files if nothing was written over them since.
So if you plan on this DONT write any new files to the disk and DONT format it.

Is There a Wii Black Ops ISO compressed to fit in a 4G USB Drive?

Sakura323

My wii dvd drive broke or something , but i had another alternative and its to run iso on a portable hard drive but all i had was a 4 G USB and i manage to put some games there because they were like 1.5 g:nevertheless, does any one know were i can find Black Ops ISO to fit on a 4 G USB DRIVE?

Answer
You can't play it if its compressed and not the original size. Find another USB drive bigger than 4 GB or get an SD or SDHC card (16 or 32 GB) or get a hard drive from Seagate or another manufacturer.

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There is a BIG RED X on my G: portable hard drive, how do i remove it?

g portable hard drives image

Josenoe V

I got a new portable hard drive and now it shows a big red x on it. I provided a picture from imageshack to show you.
But yeah, theres that big x, and the icon looks like a network folder.

Not that im running Vista 64bit but also, this harddrive used to be in a laptop but i bought an external case and now i use it as a portable device.

Answer
You should wipe the hard disk clean first and then reformat it.

Use DBAN to wipe it, then Vista to reformat it.

http://www.dban.org

Read the instructions and then download and run

How do I change the root letter of my portable hard drive from G to F in Windows XP?

Mike

I plugged my portable hard drives in a different order and it automatically assigned them different letters. Now my programs are looking in the wrong places for files. How do I manually assign drive letters?

Answer
I hate no talent clowns on here... changing your drive letter is really easy.

-right click "My Computer"
-click "manage"
-click "disk management" under "storage"
-right click on the drive you want to change
-click "change drive letter and path"
-click "change"
-change the drive letter

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