Thumb Drive

[Jeffrey Prince]

Considering purchasing another "Flash" drive, 4GB size as that would replace my 1GB one.

The 4GB would be able to hold ALL of my documents from my Mac.

My biggest concern is if I loose it, all my info is available to the finder of the little Flash drive.

Does anyone know of any way to add security software to the Flash Drive so that the data is safe if I loose it??

Thanks,
Jeff

[Larry Cronkite]

There are a number of ways to secure your data.
Do a Google on secure flash drives.

[Jeffrey Prince]

There are a number of ways to secure your data.
Do a Google on secure flash drives.

Thanks, I'll do it right now. Never thought of using Goooogle for this!

Thanks,
Jeff

[Chris Waldrip]

Two suggestions...

First, if you make sure the drive is Mac formatted then most folks will have a problem opening it (assuming they're trying to do it on a PC).

Second, you can create a disk image that's password protected. To do this open Disk Utility, click on New Image. Set the size to custom, and set it to a little below the available space on your thumb drive. Set encryption to 128, and make the format a Sparse image (it'll grow as needed). Click create, and you'll be prompted for a password.

When done, copy the ".sparseimage" file to your thumb drive. The image at this point will be small (something like 50MB), but as you add stuff it'll get larger.

[Jeffrey Prince]

Two suggestions...

First, if you make sure the drive is Mac formatted then most folks will have a problem opening it (assuming they're trying to do it on a PC).

Second, you can create a disk image that's password protected. To do this open Disk Utility, click on New Image. Set the size to custom, and set it to a little below the available space on your thumb drive. Set encryption to 128, and make the format a Sparse image (it'll grow as needed). Click create, and you'll be prompted for a password.

When done, copy the ".sparseimage" file to your thumb drive. The image at this point will be small (something like 50MB), but as you add stuff it'll get larger.

Thanks for the info Chris.
One thing I don't understand about this strategy is what happens when I drag a 3.5GIG "Documents" folder to the flash drive (inside the sparse folder)? Does it encrypt the whole folder as it transfers it? Would this take a gigantic long time?
I would like to use the flash drive as backup and convenience of always having all my data in my pocket with my pocketchange.
To access a file would I have to un-encrypt the whole 3.5 GIGs or just the individual file???
Thanks,
Jeff

[Larry Cronkite]

Jeff

Your original post got me searching for what's available in hardware and software and I came across this interesting article.

http://blogs...st_porta.php

[Chris Waldrip]

Thanks for the info Chris.
One thing I don't understand about this strategy is what happens when I drag a 3.5GIG "Documents" folder to the flash drive (inside the sparse folder)? Does it encrypt the whole folder as it transfers it? Would this take a gigantic long time?
I would like to use the flash drive as backup and convenience of always having all my data in my pocket with my pocketchange.
To access a file would I have to un-encrypt the whole 3.5 GIGs or just the individual file???

The image is encrypted. To open the image you have to have the password. Not sure what the time would be, but I bet the first time it'll take longer than when you add or remove individual files.

[Jeffrey Prince]

Thanks guys for your input.

I have ben looking into it a little further too and came across an interesting tidbit.
www.usbflashdrive.org
That is an organization for the drive manufacturers.
Apparently, "smart" drives are the newest thing and the type for me.
I would wait now until I chose the right "smart" drive, some come with security features that I
am looking into now.

Thanks again for all your help-
Jeff