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The good news is that it's possible to get robust encryption for your thumb drive without spending much money — if any. Consider TrueCrypt, a free and open-source encryption solution, now at revision 4.3. TrueCrypt works by letting you create a large file and turning it into a virtual encrypted volume; once it's mounted, you can read and write to it as you would any other drive. Everything stored on the encrypted volume is inaccessible without the proper volume password. The virtual disk file does not have to be any particular extension or type, and there is no way to analyze an encrypted volume and figure out that it's encrypted; it looks like random data to the uninitiated.

An entire partition on a removable drive, rather than just a file, can also be used as an encrypted volume. Since such volumes have no identifying features either, a USB drive encrypted in this fashion will simply look like an empty volume (or at least one that's been erased). Note that this makes such a drive all the easier to erase or damage by mistake, so use this with caution.

A given encrypted volume can also be set to only be decrypted if a specific other file is present somewhere else in the system — a text document, an .MP3 file, anything at all. This "keyfile" system allows you to add another layer of security for a traveling drive: if you have the keyfile present only on your notebook and your desktop computers, then the encrypted information on the drive will only be accessible there. Even if someone obtains the volume password, they still won't be able to open it somewhere else without the keyfile.

TrueCrypt also sports many features suited to USB drives. For one, TrueCrypt lets you create a "traveler disk," a standalone copy of the program that can be placed on a USB drive along with the encrypted volume. As long as you have administrative access on the target computer (running Windows), you can launch this standalone copy of TrueCrypt and get access to the encrypted volume wherever you might go. The traveler disk can be set to automatically launch TrueCrypt and mount the encrypted volume when plugged in.

Some thumb drives come with encryption hardware built directly into the drive itself. Kingston's DataTraveler Secure drives, for instance, use hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption and come in sizes up to 8GB. That said, hardware-based encryption on a thumb drive is expensive — a 4GB DataTraveler costs as much as $120 retail — and software-based encryption can be implemented for free on any drive, removable or not.

List Of Applications And Resources For USB Drives
Want to try out some of the applications mentioned in this article? Here is a list of the apps and resources that you can use to increase the potential of your USB flash drive.

Application Suites

PortableApps.com Suite
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
A preconfigured collection of programs that's a snap to unpack and get running.

OpenOffice
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
A portable version of the popular open-source office suite.

Floppy Office
Xtort.net
Price: Free
Packs a nifty array of tiny little productivity tools into a mere 1.5MB archive.

Individual Applications

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
Mozilla's popular open-source browser.

OperaUSB
Markus Obermair
Price: Free
A version of the Opera browser tweaked for USB drives.

Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail application scaled down for USB drives.

Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
An open-source calendaring and task management application.

7-Zip Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
Archive manager that lets you work with compressed 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, and RAR files, among others.

AbiWord Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
A lightweight word processing application made even more portable for USB drives.

Portable Scribus
Quate Development
Price: Free
A portable, standalone version of the open-source word processor and page-designer application.

FileZilla Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
The popular FTP client.

Gaim Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
The open-source Gaim instant messaging client packaged as a portable app.

Miranda IM Portable
) Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
Another IM client tweaked so that you can easily use it on a USB drive.

Sumatra PDF Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
A portable PDF reader.

ClamWin Portable
Rare Ideas, LLC
Price: Free
An anti-virus application for Microsoft Windows systems through XP.

ProduKey
NirSoft
Price: Free
A small utility which recovers product keys for Windows, Office, and a number of Microsoft server applications

Operating Systems

USB Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Install
Pen Drive Linux
Price: Free
A tutorial that enables a user to install, boot and run Ubuntu Edgy portably from a USB flash drive.

USB SLAX Install
Pen Drive Linux
Price: Free
A tutorial that enables a user to install, boot and run SLAX portably from a USB flash drive.

USB Damn Small Linux Install
Pen Drive Linux
Price: Free
Directions on how to install this stripped-down version of the Knoppix open-source operating system.

Portable Qemu
Pen Drive Linux
Price: Free
A tutorial on how to use Qemu to boot any Linux version from a portable USB flash device while still working within Windows.

coLinux
AIST
Price: Free
A special distribution of Linux that's designed to run on as a windows executable.

BartPE
Bart Lagerweij
Price: Free
A utility that builds a copy of Windows's Preinstallation Environment from an existing installation of Windows.

Installing And Booting Windows XP From USB Drive — Guide
Ngine.de
Price: Free
How to run Windows directly from a USB flash drive.

Passwords

RoboForm2Go
Siber Systems, Inc.
Price: $39.95 (free limited version)
A password manager that is fills in Web forms, including passwords, but packs in a bundle of other useful and allied features.

KeePass
Dominik Reichl Price: Free
One of the best open-source password managers around.

SuperGenPass
Chris Zarate Price: Free
Creates a JavaScript "bookmarklet" which automatically supplies passwords for every Web site you visit.

Synchronize

Briefcase
Microsoft Corp.
Price: Included with OS
Lets you synchronize files from your computer into a Briefcase folder on a USB drive.

SyncToy
Microsoft Corp.
Price: Free
Helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.

Allway Sync
Usov Lab
Price: Free
Synchronization application which sports a staggering array of synchronization.

SyncBack Freeware
2BrightSparks
Price: Free; $30 for full version
A solid basic synchronization and backup application; the for-pay version adds the ability to synch in-use files and other features.

Encryption

TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt Foundation
Price: Free
Open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux, now at revision 4.3.

DataTraveler Secure
Kingston Technology Company
Price: $19-$299, depending on capacity
USB drives that come with hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption in sizes from 512MB to 8GB.

Other Resources

Listible
Listible
A Web site that lists resources and has a whole subcategory devoted to portable productivity applications.

Nirsoft
NIrsoft
A Web site that offers a collection of incredibly useful and free utilities.

Pendrivelinux.com
Pen Drive Linux
A Web site that features tutorials on how to get many common Linux distributions running from a USB drive.

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