HDD Encryption solutions help

Kromletch

Honorable
May 12, 2012
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10,510
Hello,

I am looking for a HDD encryption tool that will allow me to encrypt a drive for the user, then all they have to do is type in a password to "completely" decrypt it.

As soon as they have to open control panel or do something with an application I know I will be getting a call.

Any insight will be greatly appreciated

Thank you
 
There are a number of encrypted USB drives you can buy, Ironkey being one of them as below here:

http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/

Encrypted USB drives are quite expensive though. To keep things simple and costs down, I believe you could also just encrypt a drive with Bitlocker and give the drive to the user with the Bitlocker key to decrypt.
 
Bitlocker in Windows 8 or 10 is pretty simple. They may have to right-click on the drive and hit unlock but no advanced menus or anything of that nature.
 


What OS?
What is the purpose of the encryption?
 


Just to deliver customer data through mail, I believe bit locker only lets the user decrypt the usb temporarily from the prompt, to permanently do it you need to go through a few windows menus if I recall. It would be ideal if I could find one that completely decrypted it through a password the first time.

The customer could be using any os, I will encrypt them through windows 10
 


What if the recipient is using Linux or Apple?
This will be tricky.
 
Exactly, Although 95% of the time it would be windows.

A solution that addresses windows first would be the best, I guess apple would be a bonus at this point but not necessary.
 


Then this would need to be a self contained hardware solution.
The above mentioned IronKey (now owned by Kingston)
http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/encrypted-storage-drives/
 
Iron Key would be great aside from the large price, I am surprised how short supply free wasy to use encryption software is. Bit locker is looking the best so far, as we cannot afford to distribute ironkeys.
 


BitLocker shuts out Apple, Linux, and anything less than Win 10/8.1/7 Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate.


"Requirements for BitLocker Drive Encryption
The hardware and software requirements for BitLocker are:
A computer running Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate, or Windows Server 2008 R2. "

BitLocker on Windows 10 Home edition
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10/bitlocker-on-windows-10-home-edition/4fd2eecd-2931-4709-ad4e-85bbf3e241f0


How to use BitLocker Drive Encryption on Windows 10
BitLocker Drive Encryption is available only on Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise.
 
What do you guys think of using 7zip/Winzip to password protect the files. I believe 7zip does better compression but as far as security are they equal?

I would like to think that more users will be able to unpackage a .zip than a .7z file