I saw a good deal for a 4GB USB/thumb drive on one of the deal sites I frequent this week. It’s pretty bare bone but it meets my 2 requirements: a retractable USB head and a small form factor to be attached to a key chain.
I then secured it by encrypting its content using TrueCrypt, an open-source encryption software. Encrypting/decrypting files has always been a pain, but TrueCrypt makes it easy. You basically read and write the files seamlessly as a password-protected mounted drive. Encrypting and decrypting are done on the fly automatically. Piece of cake…
The best part is that since TrueCrypt is available in Windows, Mac and Linux, my personal data on the new USB drive is now both secure and truly portable across platforms.
Sweet! 🙂