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I want to encrypt my external hard drive but I only want it to require a password if being accessed by a PC other than mine.

This is because I have Backblaze set-up on my own PC and if Backblaze can't get passed the encryption, it won't back up the data on the external drive. But if someone were to take the drive and try plugging it into another PC I would of course want the encryption to work so they could not access it.

I'm using Windows 8.

user
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James M
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2 Answers2

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This article is a great starting point using Windows BitLocker. Unfortunately, BitLocker only works with Windows OSs - XP will open read only, Vista, 7 and 8 will prompt for password to unlock the drive for Read/Write. Plus, BitLocker can be set to automatically unlock a drive (not your system drive) when it is inserted into a particular computer - there is a tick box option "automatically unlock this drive on this computer".

Kinnectus
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You could try using truecrypt. This is installable on nearly every OS (Windows, Linux, Mac) and you can create a desktop shortcut to a Batch script with:

start TrueCrypt.exe /q /a /lX /v "\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2" /p "myPassword"

Just replace Harddisk0\Partition2 and myPassword accordingly. On all other systems you can mount it via the password manually in TrueCrypt.

SaschaZorn
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