Encrypt external drives and protect them with passwords. USBCrypt is a utility utility that you can use to encrypt USB and other removable and fixed drives with powerful encryption.

USBCrypt is the "on-the-fly" encryption software, that works by creating a Virtual Encrypted Disk on the host drive and protecting it with the password of your choosing. You decide how large the Virtual Encrypted Disk should be: it can take all of the available space of the host disk, or only a fraction of it. After you encrypt a drive with USBCrypt, you can enter your password to start the Virtual Encrypted Disk and use it just like any other real disk: you can browse it with Windows Explorer or any other program you have, copy files to it, or move them back to your main hard disk, save documents to the Virtual Encrypted disk and open them when needed, and so on. Any file that you move to the Virtual Encrypted Disk gets encrypted transparently, without you having to do anything special. When you open a document or move a file out of the Virtual Encrypted Disk, it gets decrypted automatically on the fly. When you no longer need to work with the private files, you can stop the Virtual Encrypted Disk and it will become locked with your password again.

USBCrypt puts its program on the encrypted drive, too, to make you able to use the removable drive on other computers, without USBCrypt installed on them. For example, if you've purchased USBCrypt for use in your office, you can take the encrypted USB drive home with you and use it on your home computer without installing the full copy of USBCrypt program on your home computer.

How powerful is the encryption of USBCrypt?
USBCrypt uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with the key strength of 128 or 256 bits. (Business customers have the option of using several other encryption algorithms, as well). This encryption is very powerful: there is currently no realistic method that can break such encryption. Checking all possible keys would take a long, long time (longer than the age of the Universe). The only way to get access to the files protected with USBCrypt is to provide the correct password. This is the good news; the bad news is that if you forget your password, there would be no way to get your files back. To protect you from such an unpleasant situation, USBCrypt offers you an option to create a spare key file on your computer.

Is administrator access needed to use USBCrypt?
Just like with most other software, the administrator rights are required to install USBCrypt on a computer. The administrator rights are also necessary to create the Virtual Encrypted Disks on the removable drives. However, to open and use the existing encrypted disks the administrative rights are NOT required, if USBCrypt is already installed on the computer. In other words, you will see the elevation prompts only when installing USBCrypt and creating the fresh encrypted disks. You will not normally see any elevation prompts when actually using the existing encrypted USB disks.

Can I encrypt non-USB drives?
Yes! While USBCrypt is designed primarily to encrypt the removable USB disks, it can encrypt other types of disks, as well, including FireWire and the local ones. The general rule is: if you can see the disk as a local or removable drive in the Computer folder, and you can create files on the disk, then you can use USBCrypt to encrypt such a disk.

Before you can use your USB drive to keep your private files, first you need to encrypt that USB drive with USBCrypt software. Specifically, you need to use USBCrypt program to create a Virtual Encrypted Disk on your USB drive. After the Virtual Encrypted Disk is created, you can put your private files into it to keep them powerfully encrypted and protected.

How to use:
1. Running USBCrypt
2. Choosing name
3. Choosing encrypted size
4. Choosing the password and encryption method
5. Formatting the Virtual Encrypted Disk
6. The encrypted drive is ready for use

The license of this software is Free Trial Software, the price is $49.95, you can free download and get a free trial.