In my opinion, one of the best invention in computer world is the USB flash drive. It’s so small and light which makes it convenient to carry along whenever I go. Way better than floppy disk because the data doesn’t get corrupted easily. Definitely better than CD/DVD because you don’t need a burner to write the data to the disc. Finally, I’d say that the transfer rate is acceptably fast. Moreover, a USB flash drives doesn’t cost much nowadays unless you go for those with really big storage or extra features such as U3. Practically everyone can afford it…

USB flash drives are great BUT it doesn’t come with any security at all. First of all is the write protect which I think it should be made as a standard like floppy disk and memory cards. Without a write protect switch, a computer virus can infect the drive and eventually infect the computer or can manipulate the data that’s in the drive. Next is the encryption. USB flash drives are small and can be easily misplaced or stolen. We can play safe by not letting other people get our data in a pendrive by encrypting the drive.
USB Security Encryption
There’s TrueCrypt, one of the best encryption but I find it a little confusing for a basic computer user to configure. Rohos Mini Drive is another free software that creates a hidden partition on your flash drive but there is limitation to the partition space unless you upgrade. Do take a look at USB Flash Security which I will be reviewing today.

USB Flash Security is a security software that protects data in a USB flash drive by a password. Unlike Rohos Mini Drive, it creates a partition from a rdisk.rdi file when you enter the correct password. If the USB drive is formatted or the rdisk.rdi file is deleted, all your data is gone even though it’s encrypted. But USB Flash Security offers something way better which is it encrypts the whole drive, leaving only a small space to for the unlocker file to sit in. If someone formats the drive, your encrypted space and data is still intact and only the unlocker file gets deleted which can be easily restored from the program on your computer.

Here’s a short walk-through on how easy it is to use USB Flash Security. After installation and run the shortcut, here’s what USB Flash Security looks like. It will automatically detect your flash drive when you insert one. All you need to do is click the Install button.

USB Flash Security

Then you will be prompted to enter a password and the optional hint to remind you of your password if you forget.

Protect USB with password

After encrypting your USB flash drive, you can only find 2 files (autorun.inf and UsbEnter.exe) in your drive. Run UsbEnter.exe, enter your password and within a few quick seconds you’ll have access to the encrypted space for you to save, edit or delete files.

unlock usb flash security

When you’re done, simply unplug or eject your flash drive and it will be automatically locked. If you check the encrypted USB flash drive space, it’s only 476KB on my 2GB drive.
usb encrypted space
That explains why even after formatting the drive the encrypted data is untouched as it only formats the 476KB removing the unlocker and autorun file. While playing around with this tool, I found a bug which is able to bypass the encryption by simply changing the drive letter. However doing that will make you loose all your files on your encrypted space. Hopefully the author of USB Flash Security knows about this bug and fix it.

There are 5 versions available for USB Flash Security and one of it is the free version which allows you to use on a USB flash memory smaller than 4GB. Of course the paid versions offers more feature than the free version.

[ Download USB Flash Security ]

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