Nowadays, the protection of confidential information and personal data stored on removable hard drives of computers or external devices is becoming increasingly important. And many users are seriously thinking about how to put the password on the hard disk partition or even the entire disk. It should be noted that you can not trust all the programs and tools that are so widely advertised on the Internet, since even established passwords for access to encrypted data are experienced hackers crack very quickly. So what do you think, which tools are best used to provide high-quality and reliable protection for your hard drive or similar external device? Let's look at some of them.
How to put a password on a hard drive in BIOS?
Apparently, almost every user knows that immediately when you turn on the computer device, you can immediately go to the settings of the primary input / output system, which has a number of interesting options. Indeed, why not put the password there?
To do this, you just need to find the Security section, which will necessarily contain an item with the name like Set HDD Password, HDD Password Status, Hardware Password Manager or something like that. You need to select this option, enter and confirm the password, and then remember to save the changes on exit (F10 + Y).
Everything seems to be simple, but this technique has the only serious gap. Despite the fact that it is quite difficult to crack the installed password combinations in the BIOS, you do not need to be seven spans in the forehead to figure out how to reset the set password. To do this, just remove the CMOS battery from the socket on the motherboard for 10-15 minutes, after which the settings will be automatically restored to the initial (factory) state.
How to put a password on a hard drive in Windows 10 and below using system tools?
The Windows family of OS itself has its own tools for encrypting a disk or a single partition with a combination of protection. How to put a password on the hard drive in all recent systems? Of course, to perform such operations, you can use the built-in applet called Bitlocker. Immediately it is worth noting that it works equally well with both stationary disks and external HDDs. The essence of using this utility is that it encrypts all the data, and for access to it (viewing in decrypted form, for example, when connecting a stationary hard drive to another computer), you just need to enter a special key.
In the "Explorer", select the desired partition or the connected external device from the list of available disks, through the PCM, use the Bitlocker enable point, mark the point to use the password to unlock, enter and confirm the password, and then select one of the three options for saving it (on the USB device, in file or print).
It is best to save the combination on external media, rather than in a file that will be present on the hard drive. After that, it remains to click the encryption start button and wait for the process to complete, for which, depending on the capacity of the disk or partition, it may take a lot of time.
Features of the mobile OS Windows 8.1 RT
Now let's see how to put the password on the hard drive in Windows 8 or version 8.1 of the RT modification for some mobile PCs (tablets based on ARM processors). In such devices, particularly Surface tablets, encryption is enabled initially. However, this applies only to those devices that come with a pre-installed version 8.1 or on which a special update was automatically installed in the form of BIOS firmware. That is why even when they are connected via USB to other computers, their internal and removable drives are not detected at all.
It is also impossible to remove the full protection, even when generating a 48-digit code that must be entered in a special field, for example, if you use the advanced boot options to access the safe mode. In addition, the Secure Boot option is activated in the BIOS, which cannot be disabled either, and you won’t be able to reset the settings without removing the BIOS chip from the motherboard.
But it is in the clean G8 that you can enable Bitlocker encryption in the same way as described above. If something doesn’t work, you can use protection activation via the command line as an additional tool by entering the command manage-bde –protectors C: -enable (an example is given for the system section “C”).
Setting passwords in Disk Password Protection
Now a few words about how to put the password on the hard drive using third-party utilities for this. One of the simplest and most interesting programs, many experts call the DPP application. In the launched program, through the PCM menu on the selected section, you need to activate the boot protection installation item, and then enter and confirm the combination that you invented.
The convenience of the application is that you can additionally set a hint in case you forget the password.
In addition, you can use a special hidden protection mode, in which even without loading the correct password the operating system will be blocked.
Partition encryption in TrueCrypt application
Speaking about how to put a password on your hard drive, you can not ignore another powerful utility called TrueCrypt. It looks a bit more complicated than the previous one, but the level of protection in it is much higher.
In the application, you first need to use the Create new volume item, then select the desired partition (for the system disk, select the Entire system drive item), then specify the standard encryption method, set the encryption option for the entire partition (Encrypt the whole drive), specify how many operating systems are installed in the partition (usually the Single option is used for one), set the AES encryption type and RIPEMD-160 hashing, enter and confirm the password, and then start the encryption with the generation of a cryptographic key. Along the way, you can specify the place of its preservation, but this procedure is not mandatory.
Additional data protection
Finally, let's see how to put a password on a removable hard drive or partition that contains only user files and not components of the operating system or installed programs.
As the simplest tool, you can offer the most common WinRAR archiver, in which you need to add the selected folders and files to the archive, specify the “No compression” parameter for the compression type, set and confirm the password, and after creating the archive simply delete the original data.
Note: in a similar 7-Zip archiver, you can additionally use the 256-bit AES encryption offered in the default settings, or choose another type yourself.