Brian
On May 3, 2005, at 1:42 PM, Todd Russell wrote:
A while back I lost my USB jump drive. After careful consideration, I decided to get a new jump drive, the same as my old one, but this time consume all of it's space with a password protected and encrypted disk image, or partition. Hopefully, I thought, this would protect my information, so even if it was stolen again the data on it would be protected from unauthorized viewing.
However, I don't know how to go about this. I know I use disk utility for this, but I'm not sure where to go from there. Could someone please help me?
When you open DiskUtility, there should be a "New Image" button to click if you're in Panther, otherwise you can choose "New..." from the "Image" menu. You will get a dialog box that has 3 drop lists. 1 is for size. I has some predefined sizes, but there is a "Custom" option at the bottom that will let you define your own. The 2nd is for encryption. There are only 2 options here, so that should be obvious. The 3rd is for the type, Read/Write or Sparse. Sparse disk images are supposed to be "open-ended" in that they will expand as needed if you exceed the initial size limit. I have a friend who has tried these, though, and they don't seem to work quite right. I'd recommend sticking with the static size by choosing the Read/Write option. You will need to leave a little room on the drive for the trash folder and desktop files. So, don't forget that when choosing your size. As long as you leave at least 4KB free space aside from the image you will copy on, I think it will be okay.
Also, if anyone has a clever way of protecting the drive from being formatted, so as to make it completely unusable for any unscrupulous individual who might take off with this drive, I would greatly appreciate it,
There is absolutely nothing you can do at a software level to pull this off. Someone will always be able to dig up a tool to format this no matter what you do to try and stop them. You could be more devious, though, if you're not afraid of soldering. You could take the thing apart and switch the 2 power leads and data on the inside of the casing. Then, you could make a custom usb cable that switches the leads back. That way, it would only work with your custom cable. However, if someone tried to plug it into anything without your cable, it wouldn't work. It might even damage something if you are lucky. ;) Of course, you would have to guard this thing well and make sure that no unsuspecting family or friends try to use your drive. Obviously, this an involved hack, but it is the only way I can conceive of to truly keep it from being reused by a thief.
Peace, Todd
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