Ubuntu

Protecting files on a USB Drive?

Asked by Derek Lawrence

Hi. I've just enabled the Password protection on my HDD in the BIOS (I've only just realised this still works even if it's transplanted into another PC), and I'm wondering if there's something similar I can do on a USB Drive to protect my back-up files? It kind of defeats the object of protecting the Computer HDD if the duplicate files are available to all and sundry from my back-ups! I've tried resetting the permissions in the relevant file Properties dialogue, but when I log in to an alternative user account (I've tried my sons and also the guest account) I still have full access to read (didn't try writing) the files I want to block/hide. As you can see from my question, I'm not all that experienced with Linux (I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a Net-book), so step by step instructions, if possible, would be greatly appreciated please. Many thanks in advance.

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Best mycae (mycae) said : 		#1

You can use disk encryption. By nature this involves more computation, so can slow things down, but if used appropriately, there will be almost* no way to decrypt the file without a password.
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2010/09/encrypt-thumb-drives-ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-truecrypt/

Alternatively, when making your backups, save to a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 archive (depending upon your needs, bz2 is much slower but has a bit higher compression). then use openssl or pgp to encrypt the archive
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/12/12/simple-file-encryption-with-openssl/
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-how-to-encrypt-and-decrypt-files-with-a-password.html

* - Except with currently infeasible computational capacity

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Derek Lawrence (derek-l) said : 		#2

Excellent - problem solved, and a whole lot less complicated than I expected. Thank you very much indeed.