Re: External disk security

From: Steven L Umbach (n9rou_at_nospam-comcast.net)
Date: 06/08/04 

Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 17:54:51 GMT

The only way would be to use encryption such as EFS. If the drive has no operating
system on it and no user profiles then a third party finding it would not be able to
decrypt the EFS files since they would not have access to the EFS private key that is
needed and stored in the users and recovery agents profile. In W2K two parties can
decrypt EFS files - the user who decrypted them and the designated recovery agent[s]
who would be the built in administrator account by default on a stand a alone machine
and possibly a domain administrator,etc on a domain machine. Efs info can show what
users can decrypt a file and their related thumbprint info for the associated
certificate/private key. If you use EFS if is a good idea to run cipher /w on the
drive before shutting down to try to remove any cleartext remnants of encrypted
files. EFS has it's hazards in that if you have to reinstall the operating system and
you do not back up your EFS private keys, you will lose permanent access to your
data. Be sure to read the link below on EFS best practices. --- Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;223316

"Zen Andreas" <zen8069@zen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:u9e6cVWTEHA.2236@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> I have an external disk (60GB) which I use daily between my home-
> and the office-computer.
> Both computers run Win2000.
>
> I have tried to encrypt the data and add user rights, but using
> other computers this is easy to change once logged in as
> administrator on a third party Win2k computer.
> What is the best way of securing access to this (firewire) disk
> (or directories) such that if I loose it "no one" can have (easy)
> access to it?
>
> Many thanks
>
> --
> Zen Andreas
>
>

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