Anyone using a password lock on a hard drive. I dont need to encrypt just lock as I have some boarders. Freeware preferably. Cheers

Bios password no good?

i couldnt find it!

Yeah anything other than BIOS password is useless assuming your boarders know what a Live CD is. BIOS password is always in the very first menu page, usually at the end of the options before 'Exit without save' and whatever.

You talking about locking before windows boots up? I want windows XP to boot but with a passworded drive. I dont mind sharing I just want a private hdd without having to go with external HDD.

What's wrong with creating another account and using NTFS permissions?

i hate accounts

The best option is TrueCrypt in my opinion then. There's different ways to use it but essentially you can create a file that mounts as a separate HDD and store your stuff on that.

What's wrong with creating another account and using NTFS permissions?

Insecure. If you don't password BIOS then you can hit delete, change settings to boot from CD/USB/Ethernet and then boot an OS and just copy all their files off.

Back up all your personal data and format the hard drive. Borders WILL go through your stuff, they WILL download porn and probably illegal movies/music. The more you password protect stuff the more they're going to wonder what exactly is so important. Just whack it all on an external drive and be done with it.

Also do you mean hard drive or partition password?

Oh I was thinking you meant the SMART accessible manufacturer specific security measures. You could use those to stop them from writing to the drive.

How tech savvy are they ?
Get a 2nd hard drive and when your not gonna be home disconnect the the drive in ur bios or take out the connecting cable.

yeah Crypt it

I tried Truecrypt and its got some cool features but i dont want to encrypt. It takes time to encrypt so i might as well just create a zipfile and password it.

How tech savvy are they ? Get a 2nd hard drive and when your not gonna be home disconnect the the drive in ur bios or take out the connecting cable.

It doesn't matter about tech savvy. I dont care if there's a HDD they cannot access and they know about it. To reboot to reconnect is too inconvieniant.

I use PGP disk that is part of the PGP Desktop suite to keep all my arms dealer finances, terrorist/freedom fighter client list, bomb schematics and world domination plans under wraps.

Don't forget your DRUG IMPORTING RING CONTACTS ara!

Zylox, sounds seriously like you're overcomplicating it - this is exactly what accounts in XP is for. Just have a guest account on your PC and WALLAH, you're done. You don't even need to log off your session to let them use it - when you're AFK, just lock the PC and your session will keep running and if they want to use the PC they can log in and yours will stay running, so you can resume it later.

Zylox, sounds seriously like you're overcomplicating it - this is exactly what accounts in XP is for. Just have a guest account on your PC and WALLAH, you're done. You don't even need to log off your session to let them use it - when you're AFK, just lock the PC and your session will keep running and if they want to use the PC they can log in and yours will stay running, so you can resume it later.

This ^
Stop being a whiney bitch "oh no I hate usernames", it's a f***ing piece of piss.

What a f***ing big girls blouse. XP accounts will do all that you need.

i hate accounts

just use another account, its the easiest way to do what you want to do.

+1 vote for truecrypt if you wanna go that way tho.

Another +1 for Truecrypt.

Actually, has anyone else done the entire HDD encryption with hidden SYSTEM drive? I tried it out but was disappointed that you couldn't connect other HDDs in Read/Write mode, only read mode. I know whhy, but it greatly reduced the desirability of such a setup.

WALLAH

voilà

disconnect the the drive in ur bios

I remember doing that once when I installed windows 2000 so it wouldn't mess with my system drive, turns out windows 2k didn't care the drive was disabled in the BIOS and used the damn thing anyway. It installed the boot loader to the disabled drive so of course while windows could see it when I rebooted I got the no system disk error because it was still disabled in the BIOS. How the hell does that work? My computer was possessed by demons.

lol bios passwords, omg teh b82rez
seriously, every kid can get past a bios password these days

run vmware & keep it inside that vm? :]

What's wrong with creating another account and using NTFS permissions?

That made me chortle heartily.

Seriously though, just go external HDD and keep it locked in your room. Any software based protection you put on your files is going to be circumventable anyway. Setting up user accounts and NTFS permissions SHOULD be enough to stump your average person and be enough of a deterrent to stop a more leet boarder bothering to try and see your files. Do not make the mistake of thinking that NTFS permissions will prevent a determined snoop with a bit of Googling skills from seeing your files.

I'm still giggling.

so who are these boarders anyway that you are so concerned about them hacking up your pc?

or you could tell them to f*** off and buy their own PC!

exactly. if you don't trust them you don't trust them. how do you know they aren't just going to setup a keylogger and no matter how you protect your files they will be able to unlock them?

if you don't trust them on your computer why the f*** do you let them live in your home?