Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Securing Data on Flash Drives

This afternoon, I officially threw up my hands in surrender. I've tried different ways to password-protect the flash drives I bought months ago, to no avail.

I downloaded TrueCrypt and carefully followed the directions numerous times -- from at least three sources -- on how to set up a flash drive for password protection. It just didn't happen for me. It's likely something really stupid, but I'm not taking it further for now.

Yes, I could throw money at the problem by taking the loss on the flash drives I already bought and buying, after all, pre-locked flash drives. Or I could, after all, buy an external hard drive that'd be easier to password-protect (I guess).

I'm at the classic decision-making point when one is lost on the road:
Do I turn around now and retrace my steps (ugh, boring, demoralizing, maybe expensive in time) til I reach that turn-off that I was supposed to take? Or do I keep moving forward, but at the risk of getting more lost, thus making it even more expensive in time or money? 

For now, I'm just going to think about it. Think about what problem I'm really trying to solve, define my goals, make a realistic assessment of my risks, and go from there.

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