How To Password Protect Your USB Stick: 3 Easy Ways

How To Password Protect Your USB Stick: 3 Easy Ways

by Tina Sieber

USB thumb drives are small, portable, and can be read on any device with a USB port. These features make them the perfect vehicles to transport data between computers. Due to their portability, however, they are also easily lost. Thus sensitive files callired on a USB stick should always be protected.

Unfortunately, you cannot simply password protect your entire USB stick, like you have password protected your Facebook account. Tools that will seriously protect your your data, all work with encryption. Unless you want to invest in a secure flash drive with hardware encryption, you can use freeware applications to achieve a similar level of protection. This article summarizes some of the easiest ways to password protect files and folders on your computer.

1. Manually Save Files With a Password

As mentioned above, you can't safely password protect your entire USB stick without using encryption. However, if you shy away from the time consuming encryption process of entire folders and need a really quick way to only protect a few selected files, maybe you can simply save those with a USB password.

Many programs, including Word and Excel, allow you to save files with a password. For example in Word, while the document is open, go to >Tools > Options and switch to the Security tab. Now enter a Password to open, click OK, re-enter the password when asked, and finally save your document and don't forget the password.

2. Create An Encrypted & Password Protected Partition With Rohos Mini Drive

Many tools can encrypt and password protect your data. Most, however, require Administrator rights to run on any given computer. Unfortunately, this is also the case for one of the best encryption tools: TrueCrypt. Tools like these are not a viable solution if you need to securely transfer data to a computer where you do not have Administrator rights.

Rohos Mini Drive, on the other hand, is a tool that will work whether or not you possess Administrator rights. The free edition can create a hidden, encrypted, and password protected partition of up to 2GB on your USB flash drive. The tool uses automatic on-the-fly encryption with AES 256 bit key length. Thanks to the portable Rohos Disk Browser, which is installed directly on your flash drive, no encryption drivers need to be available on the local system. Subsequently the protected data will be accessible anywhere.

Once you have created a password protected and encrypted container on your external drive, you can open it by clicking the Rohos Mini.exe icon from the root folder. After entering the password, your Rohos disk will be mounted and accessible via your Computer, i.e. the directory of all drives and partitions connected to your system. To close your Rohos partition, right-click the Rohos icon in the Windows taskbar notification area and select Disconnect.

A more detailed description of Rohos Mini Drive can be read in my PDF guide The Office Worker's 101 Guide to a USB Thumb Drive.

3. Lock Your Flash Drive with USB Safeguard

Like Rohos Mini Drive, USB Safeguard is a portable app that runs directly from your flash drive and thus does not require Administrator rights on the local computer. It uses on-the-fly AES 256 bit encryption. The free version is limited to drive size of 2GB.

Download the usbsafeguard.exe and copy it to your USB flash drive. Run it from your flash drive and enter a password to lock the drive. To unlock it, run the file again and enter the password. The locking procedure must be repeated every time you want the drive to be locked as the tool will remember its last status, i.e. locked or unlocked. This also means that you can change the password every time you use USB Safeguard.

How to Make Your USB Devices Power Down on Safe Removal in Windows

Have you ever safely removed your USB device only to see that the LED activity light on your device remains on? This is caused by a change to Windows that has affected every version since Windows Vista. Here’s how to fix it.

Note that we’re not necessarily recommending you apply this change unless you need it.

Thanks to reader André Torga for this solution.

Why is This Happening?

Back in the days of Windows XP, when you safely removed a USB device the device was marked as removed and the USB hub port to which the device was connected was marked as disabled, which means that the device could no longer receive USB power and therefore the LED status light would turn off. However, since Windows Vista this is no longer the case, while the USB device is marked as removed the USB hub to which it is connected remains enabled.

How Can You Fix This ?

There is a setting in the registry that allows you to revert to the behavior of the Safely Remove dialog to that of Windows XP. To edit it, press the Windows + R keyboard combination type regedit and hit enter.

When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub

Then click on the edit menu and create a new key, called HubG.

Then inside the new HubG key, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and call it DisableOnSoftRemove.

Now right-click on the DisableOnSoftRemove value and choose to Modify it from the context menu.

Then change the Value data field to 1 and click OK.

You will still need to Safely Remove your device in order for this to work.

The Easy Way

If you prefer, you can download a zip file which contains registry keys to both enable and disable the feature. All you need to do is unzip the file and run either the enable or disable registry key.

Resolving USB Speed Issues, “This Device Can Perform Faster” Error

Have you ever seen the “this device can perform faster” message when you connected a USB device to your computer? This message is Windows’ way of telling you that you’re missing out on the theoretical speed of your hardware, but it may not be clear how to fix the problem. Like many computer issues, particularly with hardware, this problem has a number of possible causes and solutions.

The message tells you to connect your device to a USB 2.0 port, but what if it’s already connected to a USB 2.0 port? Or what if you thought it was connected to a USB 2.0 port already – how can you tell the difference?

Device & Port Mismatch

First thing’s first – ensure your device can actually perform faster. For example, if you dig an old, USB 1.1flash drive out of a closet and plug it into a USB 2.0 port, Windows will show you this warning message. This message doesn’t necessarily indicate that the device itself can perform faster, only that the USB port itself is operating at a lower speed than it supports.

This problem can also occur if you’re plugging a USB 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 port. USB is backwards compatible, but speed is sacrificed when using an outdated port or device.

Drivers

Problems with your system’s USB drivers can also result in this USB speed error. To fix it, you can try downloading and installing the latest USB or motherboard chipset drivers from your computer manufacturer’s website (or your motherboard manufacturer’s website, if you built your computer yourself.)

Another way you can try to fix the USB drivers is by launching the Device Manager – type Device Managerinto the Start menu and press Enter. Look for any USB devices with yellow exclamation point icons next to them under the Universal Serial Bus controllers category. If you see one with an error, right-click it and tell Windows to update or install drivers for it. You can also try updating drivers for devices that don’t have a yellow exclamation point icon.

Cable

The problem could be with your USB cable. If the cable was originally designed for USB 1.1 devices, it may not work properly at USB 2.0 speeds. It may also just be a faulty cable – when it doubt, try swapping the cable.

Damaged Hardware

Try plugging your USB device or cable into a different port on your system. It’s possible that the USB port itself is faulty and doesn’t work properly.

It’s also possible that the problem is with the device itself – you can try plugging your USB device into another computer that doesn’t experience this error. If you see the same error everywhere, the problem is with your device, not your computer.

Power

Some devices may need more power than they’re getting from the USB connection – for example, external hard drives require much more power than USB keyboards, which require fairly little power. This can often occur if you’re using a USB hub that doesn’t provide power – if you’re using a USB hub and you receive this message, you should connect your device directly to your computer instead of the hub.

There are actually two types of USB hubs – hubs that only draw power from your computer and hubs that include a separate power connector. Only hubs that include external power connectors can provide enough power to support power-demanding USB devices. This also applies to other devices that function as hubs, such as monitors with included USB ports – connect your USB device directly to your computer or a powered USB hub.

It’s also possible that your computer isn’t routing enough power to its USB port. This isn’t the way USB connections are supposed to work, but it’s a possibility with faulty or badly designed hardware. Try connecting your device to a different USB port.

BIOS Settings

Many computers’ BIOSes have a setting that can toggle between different USB modes for compatibility purposes. While computers generally ship with the optimal setting, this setting could have become changed.

To access your computer’s BIOS, you’ll have to restart your computer and press the key that appears on the screen – often F2 or Delete – during boot up. Once you have, you’ll be in a special BIOS menu. Look for a USB Mode option and ensure it’s set to the highest possible speed – for example, if your computer supports USB 2.0, the USB Mode setting in the BIOS should be set to 2.0 Mode, not 1.1 Mode. This setting may also be named something like “high speed” USB mode, depending on your BIOS.

Disabling The Warning

If you can’t resolve this problem, or if you’ve determined it’s a problem with your device or computer and you’re stuck with it, you can always disable the bubble that appears when you connect your USB device to your computer. The device will still run at a much slower USB speed than it theoretically could, but at least Windows won’t bug you about it.

To do so, open the Device Manager (type Device Manager into the Start menu and press Enter), right-click the USB host controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers, and select Properties. Uncheck the Tell me if my device can perform faster check box on the Advanced tab.

Have you run into this problem? How’d you fix it? Did you use a solution not mentioned here? Leave a comment and let us know!