External USB Hard Drives (1 Viewer)

[ShiftZZ]

I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I have a laptop with 3 external 500GB hard drives, I wish to make the data on them secure.

Is it possible to protect these external hard drives?

Thougts

ShiftZZ

 

[hilldweller]

I have a laptop with 3 external 500GB hard drives, I wish to make the data on them secure.

Is it possible to protect these external hard drives?

Thougts

ShiftZZ

Is that 3 all with different data ?
Are all 3 on line at once ?

Very difficult and expensive problem. "Incremental Backup" is the thing I'd be googling.

 

[ShiftZZ]

All drives have the same data.

1 original 2 backups.

ShiftZZ

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[JQL]

The short answer is Yes.

Try True Crypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ it's free and vrey good. You can either protect the full drive or just part of the drive.

RTFM (Read The Flipping Manual) that comes with it first so you fully understand how it works.

 

[Munchie]

You can buy encryption software, if you google "secure hard drive" there are loads of programmes available.

 

[hilldweller]

All drives have the same data.

1 original 2 backups.

ShiftZZ

Next question - did I get "protect" "secure" wrong, I assumed loss of data, two others assumed protect from prying eyes.

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[ShiftZZ]

Not confused, possibly me.

I have a very large database which I currentlt run. 480 Meg and it will grow. So what I do is backup the database onto the main external hard drive and the rotate the other two.

What I was intending to ask was. If I lost any of the hard drives, how can I make the data unusable.

Does that clear it up?

ShiftZZ

 

[hilldweller]

I have a very large database which I currentlt run. 480 Meg and it will grow. So what I do is backup the database onto the main external hard drive and the rotate the other two.

What I was intending to ask was. If I lost any of the hard drives, how can I make the data unusable.

Does that clear it up?

ShiftZZ

Yes. The other two answers were what you wanted. Though to be accurate you make the data unusable before you lose the drive.

You don't say how you back up the data on the other two drives, if you just copy, you stand the risk of destroying your own data. What happens is you get a big hole in the main data, so you copy this to backup1 then if you don't find the hole before you copy to backup2 you end up with 3 holy sets of data.

Back to "incremental backup" with added encryption - google "incremental backup encrypt" and you get loads of ideas.

 

[G4GMO]

Not confused, possibly me.

I have a very large database which I currentlt run. 480 Meg and it will grow. So what I do is backup the database onto the main external hard drive and the rotate the other two.

What I was intending to ask was. If I lost any of the hard drives, how can I make the data unusable.

Does that clear it up?

ShiftZZ

Unlikely you can making it unuseable unless you pay out for encryption software and the most encryption you are likely to get for free will only encrypt about 25 mb. The best solution is to encrypt anything crucial like emails or documents with sensitive data is to use something like Cryptainer as long as it is less than 25mb which will be free. But make sure you use a really obscure and long password say more than 20 characters. Depends how paranoid you are. I am

Unless of course I'm mistaken, having reread the thread. If I'm wrong you can always ignore my useless information.

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