Flash Drive Encryption across multiple OS

travissparks1307 · 08-31-2010, 03:05 PM

It's as simple as it sounds (or maybe not) I have a Flash drive I want to use between multiple computers running various operating systems but I want to encrypt the contents. I mainly use Ubuntu 10.04 but the computers I use at school use Windows 7 and a few use Mac. I was hoping to find a way to encrypt the drive and use it with both Win 7 and Ubuntu if possible. If it's not I'll come up with something else. Thanks in advance.

TB0ne · 08-31-2010, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by travissparks1307

It's as simple as it sounds (or maybe not) I have a Flash drive I want to use between multiple computers running various operating systems but I want to encrypt the contents. I mainly use Ubuntu 10.04 but the computers I use at school use Windows 7 and a few use Mac. I was hoping to find a way to encrypt the drive and use it with both Win 7 and Ubuntu if possible. If it's not I'll come up with something else. Thanks in advance.

If you're using it on just one or the other, it WOULD be fairly simple. However, since you're using both, it's tricky. You could approach it one of two ways, to keep things easy:

Partition the USB drive into one Win7 and one Linux partitions. Encrypt them with the encryption tool of choice on either system. It'll be easy to move it around, but you won't necessarily be able to copy files from Win7->Linux or back.
Leave the drive in FAT32 format, and just encrypt the FILES on it. PGP programs abound for all different flavors of OS'es, so when you want a file, just decrypt it (you'll know your key, after all), and go at it. Bonus with this method is that if you need to share a file with a friend, you can put that one file on there unencrypted, and not have to divulge your key.

anomie · 08-31-2010, 04:48 PM

Alternatively, if you've got a budget ($$) for this, you might consider checking out a commercial hardware encryption offering, a la: https://www.ironkey.com/products

(I don't work for ironkey, nor do I get paid to suggest that.)

Kenny_Strawn · 08-31-2010, 05:35 PM

Or, you could also encrypt the drive with an OS on it, so that you could boot into your encrypted data. Definitely something to consider.

win32sux · 08-31-2010, 07:54 PM

BTW, if the data on your flash drive is valuable enough to warrant encryption, then doesn't accessing it on public computers kind of defeat the purpose?

grim76 · 08-31-2010, 08:29 PM

You might want to try looking at something like Truecrypt. I have used it in the past for encryption across platforms.

TB0ne · 09-01-2010, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grim76

You might want to try looking at something like Truecrypt. I have used it in the past for encryption across platforms.

Good call. I'd go that route, rather than Ironkey. As far as I know, Ironkey doesn't work on Linux systems, only Windows and Mac.

anomie · 09-01-2010, 10:33 AM

I can't / won't vouch for it (as I don't own one), but:

https://www.ironkey.com/basic

Quote:

IronKey Basic works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 without administrator privileges or the need to install any software or drivers. IronKey Basic devices also work on Linux and Macintosh OS systems.

eyemole80 · 09-01-2010, 11:00 AM

You can use cryptsetup utility in ubuntu to create encrypted data or disk. Disk encrypted using this utility can be easily accessed in Windows using FreeOTFE tool. Installing FreeOTFE on Windows-7 is a bit non-trivial though due to some crap enhanced windows-7 security.

TB0ne · 09-01-2010, 03:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anomie

I can't / won't vouch for it (as I don't own one), but:

https://www.ironkey.com/basic

They must have added support since I last looked at them, but they didn't have the "basic" product then either. It's been a couple of years, and I didn't bother to look after they didn't have Linux support.