How can i encrpyt my USB flash drive?

[Derrick]

Hi,

i have a 2GB usb flash drive that contains some files that I need for work, and i'm pretty paranoid about losing the drive. If i wanted to encrypt the files, can I? and if so, what GUI app (like filevault) would allow me to do this? I would like this to be able to be used in my mac as well as windows computer (that might be asking too much, but i had to ask)

Thanks

Derrick

 

[jc1350]

I use GnuPG (gpg) on Mac and Linux. There is also a windows version, but I don't recall every playing with that one. With it you can encrypt files, but not the actual directory structure (meaning file names will be readable). It also doesn't take into account deleted files that are recoverable.

http://www.gnupg.org/

The below is what I do on Linux...it's been a while since I did it on the Mac, but the syntax should be the same

Once you have it installed you can start using. You do not need to make a keypair to encrypt files. If you want to sign or encrypt email, then you do need to create a keypair.

Let's say you want to encrypt a file called stuff.txt
encrypt:
gpg -c stuff.txt

decrypt:
gpg stuff.txt.gpg

with both, you'll need to enter the passphrase and don't forget...this will not delete the unencrypted file nor will it wipe it clean if it is deleted.