portable hard drive with windows file system security

[[wizard]]

i have several users who will be traveling around the world with their laptops and are interested in running a small portable hard drive, the kind which only gets power from the usb cable.

i've seen some drives which have finger print technology but i worry about something that could break and loose the information on the drive. and i've seen truecrypt but i want something fairly painless and i'm not sure i want our users to have their own passwords for their hard drive partitions.

is there a way to use windows file system security on a usb hard drive to encrypt its contents?

 

[Nenu]

Yes.
Once encrypted, the data will only be accessible on the machine that did the encryption.
Make sure each machine is backed up as you need that install of Windows to get the data back. If the machine dies you will likely lose the data without a Windows backup.

To encrypt a folder, this is from Windows help:

Open Windows Explorer.
Right-click the file or folder that you want to encrypt, and then click Properties.
On the General tab, click Advanced.
Select the Encrypt contents to secure data check box.
Notes

To open Windows Explorer, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Explorer.
You can only encrypt files and folders on NTFS file system volumes.
Files or folders that are compressed cannot also be encrypted. If you encrypt a compressed file or folder, that file or folder will be uncompressed.
Files marked with the System attribute cannot be encrypted, nor can files in the systemroot directory structure.
When you encrypt a single file, you are asked if you want to encrypt the folder that contains it as well. If you choose to do so, all files and subfolders that are added to the folder in the future will be encrypted when they are added.
When you encrypt a folder, you are asked if you want all files and subfolders within the folder to be encrypted as well. If you choose to do so, all files and subfolders currently in the folder are encrypted, as well as any files and subfolders that are added to the folder in the future. If you choose to encrypt the folder only, all files and subfolders currently in the folder are not encrypted. However, any files and subfolders that are added to the folder in the future are encrypted when

Also see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223316

 

[[wizard]]

i was looking for something that would tie in with active directory, maybe a group policy sort of thing that would allow the drive to be read from any machine that was logged in as the user who encrypted the information.