Not sure is this is the best place to post this question, but wondering what is the best way to encrypt a usb drive?
Want to be able to carry an encrypted flash drive with me but also be able to unlock it, if possible, on various OSes. Preferably with some kind of portable software. Something similar to the method that comes with the Kingston Data Traveler USB drives.
Edit: Seems like Veracrypt and Cryptomator are the best options to check out. Thank everyone!
Veracrypt. Make a file on your disk.
Don’t want a storage file?
Make 2 partitions, put veracrypt portable exe on the first normal storage partition. (fat32 is likely ideal here) Second partition formatted with veracrypt.
I make 1 single partition for the entire drive and encrypt it with veracrypt. Veracrypt has portable executables for windows and if I lose the flash drive in the worst case people will think it’s a corrupted disk (unrecognized partition) and reformat them probably.
This, except consider exFAT. It’s more modern than FAT32 but also widely compatible.
https://www.howtogeek.com/235596/whats-the-difference-between-fat32-exfat-and-ntfs/
Probably far from the best option; but you could use 7zip? Put a 7zip portable exe & linux binary on the usb, put the regular contents in an encrypted .zip file, anyone with the password can decrypt. I assume there are much more secure options though.
Encrypted ZIPs are very trivial to break. I can break it with a simple python script.
For instance, Microsoft does that for all encrypted ZIPs
Cryptomator might be a good option. They have clients for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s designed around encrypting your cloud storage but nothing should stop you from using it on a USB drive.
