Usb Flash Drive Case

What to do with your USB flash drive: Encrypt it

USB flash drives are easy to lose if you don't keep track of them. In part three of our "What to do with your USB flash drive" series, we'll show you how to encrypt your USB flash drive so that if it gets lost or stolen, its contents will be safe and sound:

Encrypt it
Step 1: Download and install TrueCrypt .

Step 2: After you've inserted an empty USB flash drive into your computer, launch TrueCrypt and click on the Create Volume button.

Step 6: At the Volume Creation Mode screen, select Create encrypted volume and format it, then click Next.

Step 7: At the Encryption Options screen, leave the defaults unless you specifically want to change the algorithms. Click Next to continue.

Step 8: At the Volume Size screen, all the selections should be grayed out and will display the total size of your USB flash drive. Click Next to continue.

Step 9: At the Volume Password screen, type in your password twice. TrueCrypt recommends a password consisting of 20 characters or more. Click Next to continue.

Step 10: At the Large Files screen, select No, then click Next.

Step 11: At the Volume Format screen, move your mouse randomly on the screen. The longer you move the mouse around, the stronger the encryption will be. When you're done, click on the Format button. When the confirmation dialog comes up, read it for accuracy and click the Yes button.

Decrypt it
In order to decrypt the USB flash drive, you have to mount the encrypted partition--in our case, the entire USB flash drive--to a virtual drive letter.

Step 1: Launch TrueCrypt and click the drive letter you want to mount your USB flash drive to.

Step 2: Click the Select device button and choose your USB flash drive.

Step 3: Click the Mount button, type in your password, then click the OK button.

You should now see the drive letter you chose in Windows Explorer. This is your encrypted drive. Store anything you'd like in this drive to keep it encrypted. Note that you must use the mounted drive letter, not the drive letter that shows up when you insert the USB flash drive.

There you go. Now you if you lose your USB flash drive, you can feel safe knowing that nobody will be able to access the files on it.

Make a backup copy of the MacBook Air USB Software Reinstall Drive ...

Since it doesn't come with an optical drive, giving MacBook Air buyers a DVD of the operating system wouldn't be very helpful. That's why Apple's lightest laptop comes with the USB Software Reinstall Drive -- a very small white USB drive. Sometimes USB flash drives are referred to as "Thumb Drives," but this one is more like the size of a baby's finger.

The USB stick that comes with the MacBook Air is the best way -- and in many situations, the only way -- to restore/reinstall your MacBook Air if something goes wrong. If you have the US$100 external USB SuperDrive, then you can try to use a DVD, but I found that my MacBook Air wouldn't even boot from my original Snow Leopard DVD. (I believe this is because the DVD's build of Snow Leopard is a lower version number than the Air originally shipped with, but I am not sure.)

Since my MacBook Air first arrived I have been afraid of losing the USB recovery drive. According to someone on the Apple Discussion Forums , Apple may be willing to provide you with a new one, free of charge, if you lose yours, but what I really wanted was a backup. (I have done the same thing with my Snow Leopard DVD when I bought it, just in case it was lost or damaged.) In this case, I wanted to duplicate it onto another USB drive.

I tried 'cloning' the Reinstall Drive using SuperDuper!, which completed without error, but after it was done, my MacBook Air would not boot with the new USB drive.

Apple created the drive so that when it is mounted by OS X, it appears as a DVD, not a USB drive. This means that it was not available for me to use as a "Restore" source in Disk Utility. I could not find any way to make a copy of the disk image from Disk Utility. (If one exists, I'd be happy to hear about it.)

That's when my GeekInstincts kicked in.

If Apple wanted me to treat it as a DVD drive, that's exactly what I would do. In the past I have backed up my OS X DVDs using the Terminal, and I wondered if the same thing would work here. (Spoiler alert! It did.)

Rather than using a GUI program such as Roxio Toast or Burn , we're going to use the Terminal. Why? Because unlike those two programs, the Unix way is free, simple, and "just works." Plus, you end up with a disk image, which you should be able to use to burn an actual DVD on just about any computer.

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