Protecting Portable Drive

[rjbinney]

I can't believe I've never worried about this before...

I have an external, portable USB drive. What's the best way to keep personal data safe?

I do use VeraCrypt for some things, and am OK with it - but I see where I would get irritated with mounting times. (Phrasing!)

What are folks' opinions on using BitLocker on an external drive?

Or a third (or fourth) option?

Thanks,

[DaveLembke]

Anything super critical I burn to DVD-R's, otherwise I replicate data among multiple drives and so if data gets corrupt on one, I still have copy of it on other drives vs losing it all. Also use 15GB Google Drive space.

[rjbinney]

I'm more worried about protecting my data from falling into the wrong hands then having a copy.... (I have plenty of backups).

[patio]

Who's watching you ? ?

[rjbinney]

You know... people.

[BC_Programmer]

You never know who might be watching.

[rjbinney]

On a related note... Does anyone have any recommendations on how to secure data on a portable drive? You know, in case it's lost/stolen, etc.?

[patio]

Use BitLocker....or there are 3rd party tools as well

NOTE: If you ever lose your password yer screwed...

[rjbinney]

Thanks. I've been leary about applying BL to my internal HD as well... Don't know why, though.

Anything I need to watch out for while setting it up (besides the password issue)?

I

[DaveLembke]

On a related note... Does anyone have any recommendations on how to secure data on a portable drive? You know, in case it's lost/stolen, etc.?

If you travel with this data to where it can be stolen, I'd say anything critically personal such as banking and taxes etc leave at home in a place that no one would steal it from. Additionally a backup copy of this can be stored off site at a family members house or even a lock box at a bank.

When I travel with my laptop and any other media, I never travel with a system or data on devices that if stolen I have to worry about identity theft etc. I never use encryption on my data. Years ago I used a tool to lock my data and then lost access to my data. I realized that all I really needed to do was to isolate extremely personal sensitive data from that of which is not that critical and so when traveling I will have my music and games etc, but none of my banking or other personal data on me, so if the laptop was ever stolen or any of the devices lost or stolen no one could ever run with it and ruin my credit etc.

If you don't want to have the fear of getting locked out of your data forever, then splitting data that is critically personal and not required in your travels from data that is not critical is a means of protecting yourself.

[rjbinney]

Challenge is, I travel weekly. So unless I want to have access only to personal data on Saturdays (I can tell you, doing bills and taxes on your one day home is no way to make friends), I need to travel with personal data accessible. And I have a work-issued and -maintained laptop, so I don't feel comfortable storing it there. I guess one option would be to have a home PC with the data backed into the cloud and only access it via the cloud, but I'd rather have a drive I carry with me that's safe and will self-destruct within five seconds if teh wrong people snag it.

[BC_Programmer]

Bitlocker will work unless the people you don't want to have access to the drive are the NSA or Law Enforcement, in which case you are probably already playing a dangerous game of some sort anyway.

[rjbinney]

Funny, my password is "NSA_R_People_Too". And the folder is called "Dangerous Games".


(Just kidding, it's called "Porn". Duh!)

[EndOfForever]

I recommend BitLocker as well... but just curious to anyone on this thread, are there more 'secure' methods of encryption than BitLocker?  Even if its just as good let me know any programs you're aware of.