Password Protect USB Flash Drive

A few USB drives come with locking software on the device. AFAIK at least one of these allows you to lock access from either Windows or Mac.

Disk Utility can not password protect a drive. Disk Utility can create password protected file archives.

Kirk,

Only you can say if this would suit you, but you could create a password-protected zip file. Both Windows and the Mac would be able to handle a zip archive, password-protected or not. Would this fit the bill?

Scott

Kirk,

Unfortunately, creating encrypted zip files on the OS X side requires the use of Terminal. It is, however, relatively easy to learn how to use the "zip" command line application. To get you started, open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal. At the prompt, type:

<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">man zip</pre>

and press <RETURN>. This will open the "manual pages" reader. You can use the spacebar to view the next page, or use the up and down arrow keys to navigate one line at a time. The one thing you want to see is the part about using the "-e" option to the command. WHen you are finished reading, press "q" to quit the manual reader.

Scott

I remember following a thread a while ago where someone was asking something similar. I don't remember if they actually came up with a solution but I did note that someone said, ' man' page not withstanding, that the ' /usr/bin/zip' shipped with "OS X" apparently does not have support for encryption enabled. I don't use ' zip' myself and I'm not knowledgable in its use so don't take this as definitive, but from tinkering with it just now, I do get an ' (encryption not supported)' error...

Biovisier,

Hmmm. Thanks for that. Do you have the Developer Tools (XCode) installed? I wonder if that makes any difference (I do have them installed, but I haven't tried making an encrypted zip).

Perhaps encrypted zips, on either OS, is going to require some third-party ($$$) app. At any rate, at least OS X will open encrypted zips.

Another option for the OP might be RAR archives. On the OS X side, MacPar Deluxe (shareware, I think) will create and open RAR archives. If I am not mistaken, the Windows equivalent is "QuickPar."

Scott

Kirk,

Take a look at this link for Stuffit. It will create password-protected zip files. If you look carefully, you will see that they are offering the upgrade to the "Pro" version for only $30, as long as you register your free version.

Scott

for anyone else with this problem, you might want to take a look here http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050928160546665

note: this will only be helpful if you are comfortable with the terminal.

Hmm, that seems straightforward. No comment on the Windows end, or how good the encryption is, and no resource fork support (but that shouldn't matter to the poster here). But pretty easy from the Mac side of things.

Nice find, and thanks for the tip.