Recommendation for Encrypting contents of USB Flash Drive?

[K Steve]

Can somebody recommend a free or cheap encryption utility for
encrypting the contents of a 256M usb flash drive? I would like
something that either 1) allows me to browse the contents of the flash
drive without a password and then asks for a password to open all
files, or 2) asks for a password even to browse. Plus I want
something that can be set to just encrypt the flash drive and not all
the drives. I am using XP pro at home and Win2K at work.

Thanks,

k_r_a_u_s_t_e_r_a_t_s_b_c_g_l_o_b_a_l_d_o_t_n_e_t

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage and a copy
was sent to the cited author.]

Can somebody recommend a free or cheap encryption utility for
encrypting the contents of a 256M usb flash drive? I would like
something that either 1) allows me to browse the contents of the flash
drive without a password and then asks for a password to open all
files, or 2) asks for a password even to browse. Plus I want
something that can be set to just encrypt the flash drive and not all
the drives. I am using XP pro at home and Win2K at work.

Both of your OS's support built-in encryption on NTFS partitions. You
can reformat your flash drive to NTFS, then enable encryption on selected
files, directories, or the whole thing. Try an experiment to see if it'll
work across computers. I'm not certain how possible that is.

Otherwise, you can use WinZIP 9, which has high-level encryption, in
addition to the compression.

 

[Monster]

some flashdrive like lexmark come with encryption software on the usb drive.
What you want is a software like drivecrypt which creates files that are
containers for files (like a filesystem in a file that is encrypted).
However you won't be able to open or browse the files without a password