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Privacy solution for external USB drive?

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JeffK:
I've been looking at a way of protecting about 1.5GB of files on my 40GB USB external drive from being edited by others but to be used at home, work, (where I don't have admin privileges), church (you'd be amazed at what the audiovisual volunteer can do with a Powerpoint presentation for a children's story; like make it unusable) and potentially other computers.  Also for use on my 256k USB memory stick.

I've looked at TrueCrypt and Dekart Private Disk Light as well as some others and haven't been able to quite settle on a solution.

My criteria are

simple to use (although I tend to be turned off by totally no frills interfaces interfaces)
small
portable
not requiring administrator privileges on possible machines I might need to use
when a file is decrypted I don't have to encrypt it again to maintain the protection (actually it doesn't have to encrypt at all just be able to lock/hide a folder but not require installation on target machines ie runs off the drive or memory stick).

Any ideas?

Thanks,  Jeff

Gothi[c]:
You could use an encrypted filesystem.

If you use linux this can be done quite easily without too much overhead.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Loopback-Encrypted-Filesystem-HOWTO.html

in windows you could use PGPDisk
http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgpdisk/

or truecrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/

It is said that windows vista will have encrypted filesystem support built-in natively. (not that i'd ever use vista :p)

kimmchii:
check this out see if you can find something here:

http://www.portablefreeware.com/?c=10&sc=68

JeffK:
Well Ive had a good look and I'd have to say I haven't found quite what I want among encryption or folder lock type programs.

I need something that resides on my external drive and is independent of the computer I attach it too.  Most of the solutions require admin access to the target computer or want to load or leave a driver on the computer and won't work if they can't or leave the decrypted file visible unless I remember to delete it.  I found "folderhideking" which is a so called green installation but it is a very fragile looking piece of software at this stage.

I'm not on Linux BTW.

Jeff

JeffK:
Aha!!!  I've finally stumped the donationcoders?  ;)

PS I tried lockngo.  Appears to work OK but will only do a complete disk not a partition leaving some of the disk available for non-encryption.

Jeff

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