Is there any way to password protect a drive formatted with NTFS fs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MMM42
  • Start date Start date
M

MMM42

Is there any way to protect a hard drive (internal or external on
personal storage like Maxtor ONE TOUCH - original version)?
A modern file sytem like NTFS should have such a support.
The new version of Maxtor ONE TOUCH II has such a support - does
anybody know if this is proprietary locking system?
 
MMM42 said:
Is there any way to protect a hard drive (internal or external on
personal storage like Maxtor ONE TOUCH - original version)?
A modern file sytem like NTFS should have such a support.
The new version of Maxtor ONE TOUCH II has such a support - does
anybody know if this is proprietary locking system?
Click to expand...

Password protecting a drive has nothing to do with the file system--it's
handled at the drive controller level.
 
Password protection is done at logon, and folder permissions do what you want.

Nobody should implement drive/folder passwords, it is very insecure in
practice.
 
Previously MMM42 said:
Is there any way to protect a hard drive (internal or external on
personal storage like Maxtor ONE TOUCH - original version)?
A modern file sytem like NTFS should have such a support.
The new version of Maxtor ONE TOUCH II has such a support - does
anybody know if this is proprietary locking system?
Click to expand...

Filesystem encryption is independent of what medium the
filesystem is on. You can e.g. copy an encrypted filesystem
without the passphrase, but you cannot understand what is in it.
That means you can do secure backups!


The HDD locking systems (Maxtor one-touch, IBM travelstar passwords,
etc.) are all proprietary and protect the disk from being used
without unlocking it first. This is a different approach. It
has the disadvantage that it can be broken without the need
to break modern encryption (which is extremely hard or impossible)
and the advantage that only a driver/tool to unlock the disk is
needed instead of an OS-integrated disk encryption driver.

Arno
 
Your best bet is to create an EFS (encrypted file system). You can do
this with NTFS in Windows XP pro or Windows 2000.

cs
 
But you should read first about recovery key management. Otherwise you risk
losing all the encrypted files in case of the system reinstallation.
 
Back
Top