Posted 4 days ago

Password protecting an External Hard Drive

As we all do more an more on the internet our home backups are full of personal files with maybe financial information or personal information that we would rather people could not access.

I am fairly experienced on computers and do regular backups to external hard drives but have never password protected an external hard drive.

I use Windows and have heard of BitLocker but never used it. Could I use that to encrypt the drive? Or something else?

Is it safe to upload these type of "personal" files to the cloud (I have Microsoft/Office 365) but assume I would need to "zip" them (or use some other product to encrypt them) and password protect them before uploading them.

Are there any external hard drives that come with security or password protection built in?

I am always rather nervous of "hiding" my files behind passwords and encryption and then finding I cannot get back in to them (even though I am very good at keeping details of my various passwords and other security). Any hints?

Finally, how do you protect the passwords you have used to protect your files. Seems you replace one problem with another.

So would be glad to hear of any hints and tips about protecting my personal files, advice about Bitlocker or similar tools, and securing external hard drives etc

Thanks in advance for any hints and tips as I am sure others would find the info useful.
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  1. MadeDixonsCry's avatar
    Finally, how do you protect the passwords you have used to protect your files. Seems you replace one problem with another.

    100%

    Personally, i wouldnt entertain bitlocker after the video i watched last night:


    My suggestion would be to disconnect your backup drives and only connect them when backing up. After all... you're only protecting your files from those on the internet with bad intentions, you're not storing anything illegal, right?
    ElliottC's avatar
    The video shows an attack by intercepting the data bus between the CPU and the TPM chip. Yes, it is a vulnerability but requires a physical device to sniff out the Volume Master Key on the bus. Common sense will tell us that this is a highly unlikely scenario. Furthermore, most CPUs within the past few years are equipped with an internal TPM, which renders such attacks impossible (think about it).

    BitLocker is highly secure and is a well regarded method of encrypting data. If the OP requires taking security a step further, there is the option of using Bitlocker and VeraCrypt as a 2 stage process. That is, create a VeraCrypt container and apply BitLocker encryption to it.
  2. McShane's avatar
    I've used VeraCrypt for many years, it's great software.

    You can encrypt the whole drive, or just create an encrypted file container if you don't want to do the whole drive.
    harrythefish's avatar
    I used to use the predecessor to Veracrypt, think it was called Truecrypt. Worked well till it was abandoned by its makers, rumour mill saying 5 Eyes didn't like its unbreakability. Veracrypt allegedly has CIA backdoors. But the reason I don't use Veracrypt which mounts an entire encrypted drive is that a small corruption of the drive will destroy all of the data. These days I use 7zip to encrypt important folders then copy them to an unencrypted external drive.

    For smaller backups there's the Kingston Data traveller (might be called Ironkey nowadays) secure USB drive. It comes with the encryption software (Mac and Windows ) in a partition. As soon as you plug it in you get prompted for your password then it mounts an encrypted drive which the PC ses as a normal USB drive. Then again, one of my PCs refuses to run the decryption so that's now unpredictable. (edited)
  3. bigwheels's avatar
    People like,
    VeraCrypt
    Willy_Wonka's avatar
    If only I could remember a password, let alone two or three
  4. HappyShopper's avatar
    Check to see if the drive manufacturer offers encryption software.
  6. TristanDeCoonha's avatar
    Bitwarden, or similar, for your passwords
    You could look into steganography, and password protect your pictures. Then you could store them for free, up to 15gb in Google pictures
  7. aLV426's avatar
    Encryption always has that one weakness - the human interface. BitLocker is very secure - that video demonstrates that fact - as you need physical access to the device - it's not a remote hack (which can't be ruled out, however the amount of time & effort involved to perform a remote unlock would dissuade any casual "hacker"). Windows included external drive encryption into the BitLocker process and it also made the key recovery process simple as well - it'll store it into your MS cloud account by default. Most encryption issues arise when users write down their passwords. I would suggest BitLocker is the cheapest and easiest way to encrypt a drive on the Windows platform and has dedicated resources to make key recovery possible for the user - it requires access to your cloud account. So someone would need to compromise your cloud account and have physical access to your BitLocker encrypted device. Not impossible, but an unlikely scenario. There are various other free encryption options (FWIW I created & own the rights to the CD disk recovery option for SafeBoot, which got bought by McAfee and was later rebranded as Trellix, and no I didn't get any royalties!)
    You can get hardware encrypted hard drives, however bear in mind that should you lose/forget the passcode there is no easy way to access your data. There are several types and some require software to be installed which is generally Windows centric.
  8. guilbert53's avatar
    Author
    Thanks for all the replies.

    I have been away the last few days so not seen all the replies yet so will read them in the next day or so.
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