Tech Correspondent: Secure your USB Flash Drive with Hidden and Encrypted Partition

In my earlier post I had written that how I secured my secret projects at office in encrypted hidden partition. I thought that now everything is OK now. Then one fine day I was copying some files to my USB Flash drive. I had installed Mojopac into it and I was assured that whenever I login to different computer “Mojopac” will maintain my privacy and it will leave no trace in the system. But I realized that what I will do if somebody gets hold of my USB Flash drive. It carries some private documents which I do not want to share with anyone.

I wanted to have the same solution as I have created “hidden encrypted partition” at my work place. I have found two solutions for this.

1. Rohos Mini Drive :

Rohos Mini Drive creates hidden and encrypted drive in your USB flash drive and you can work on the files you have put in the encrypted and hidden drive without using any program. And the encryption is on the fly. And what’s more interesting is that it does not require administrative privilege to open the encrypted USB drive partition. Setup is pretty simple and automatically detects your USB flash drive and setup encrypted partition.

If you need to open secured volume on a guest computer, you just click Rohos icon on the USB flash drive root folder and enter disk password. Rohos will start a volume and will sit near the system clock to close the disk when you’ll finish.

Some of the features are:

Creates a virtual encrypted partition volume (disk) within a USB flash drive free space.
Automatically detects your USB stick config and creates encrypted partition.
Program does not require installation to work with encrypted partition on a guest computer. You can start it right from USB drive.
Encrypted partition is protected by password.
Encryption is automatic and on-the-fly.

Encryption algorithm: AES 256 bit key length. NIST approved.

Rohos Disk Browser to open encrypted partition without having Admin rights.

Virtual Keyboard - to protect your encrypted disk password from a key logger

Autorun Folder. Saved program’s/file’s shortcut will automatically start/open up upon disk connection

The limit of encrypted partition size is 1 GB

Rohos Mini Drive program does not create real partition on the USB flash drive. Thus when you insert your USB drive into USB port only one drive letter will appear in Windows.Second (secured) drive will appear only after you active it by entering a password.

Our verdict is simple and effective piece of software with simple and effective interface.

2. TrueCrypt:

Some of the unique features are listed below.

Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
2. Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
3. Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
4. Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
5. Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
6. Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.