Is it possible to secure, encrypt, password-protect a regular flash drive that comes with none of that stuff already?
I haven’t tried so I don’t know off hand, but I suspect it could be done. My friend google might know better, a straight copy of some of your question returns many hits. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=secure%2C+encrypt%2C+password-protect+a+regular+flash+drive
You could tweak the search, excluding punctuation the hyphen and ‘a regular’ e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=secure+encrypt+password+protect+flash+drive, its surprising what you can find with a good search string ;D
Yes. Use TrueCrypt to create an encrypted file or to encrypt the whole device.
www.truecrypt.org
I went on truecrypt.org and, if I read correctly, if I were to use TrueCrypt to encrypt my USB flash drive, I would need to be running on a Administrator account to access it. So if I were on a limited rights account, I wouldn’t be able to access it right?
That is one of the problems with encrypting USB pen drives the need to be running an account with admin privileges. I believe there are a couple of options that don’t require it (don’t know of the top of my head), try modifying the google search relating to administrator and see if it reveals anything.
To install the driver you should be an administrator, yes, it’s a limitation of using drivers. But I think this occur only if you encrypt the whole device. You still can create a file and have the program in the USB to decrypt that file (a big one, like a storage).
I may have misunderstood when I was reading their FAQ, (It is like trying to read a foreign language for me.) but it sounded like if I were to encrypt the USB drive, then plug it in to a pc that I am using under a limited rights account, the driver needed wouldn’t work right. Am I wrong on this?
No, you’re right.
To load into a non-admin account you need to use an encrypted file into the USB (you can also copy the necessary files to the USB to work with TrueCrypt in a portable version).