USB stick on Linux AND windows?

Hi all.

I'm just wondering if anyone has solved this problem?

USB memory stick thats been used on windows, and encrypted with its own encryption software.
Works just fine on windows. However it doesnt work on linux, so I'm wondering if there's an easy to use method of encryption (a secure method) that will work on both linux and windows?

Thanks in advance.

a reply to: VoidHawk

Use a filesystem that can be mounted in both and also decrypted by both. You are looking for TrueCrypt

www.truecrypt.org...

Are you the owner of the encrypted files or do they belong to someone else? If you're the owner of the files you have a couple of options. You can decrypt the folder before you copy it to USB when you're on your Windows machine, if that's not an option you can retrieve your private key when you're on your Windows machine and then use that to decrypt in Linux (probably).

If this is for personal use or if your employer doesn't have a problem with third party software being used then I agree with the other poster, just download a program that will decrypt it for you.

originally posted by: jollyjollyjolly
a reply to: VoidHawk

Use a filesystem that can be mounted in both and also decrypted by both. You are looking for TrueCrypt

www.truecrypt.org...

Thanks I'll look into Truecrypt.

originally posted by: Goteborg
Are you the owner of the encrypted files or do they belong to someone else? If you're the owner of the files you have a couple of options. You can decrypt the folder before you copy it to USB when you're on your Windows machine, if that's not an option you can retrieve your private key when you're on your Windows machine and then use that to decrypt in Linux (probably).

If this is for personal use or if your employer doesn't have a problem with third party software being used then I agree with the other poster, just download a program that will decrypt it for you.

No I'm not the owner. The owner has acces to a windows machine so recovery is not a problem. I was just after some info on the best way to set up the stick so that it would work on both linux and windows. I recently installed Mint onto her laptop but she uses windows at work so needs to be able to access it on both OS's.

Thanks.

Format the thumb drive to Fat 32, that should work in linux and windows. Then, encrypt the files on an individual basis using .rar or .zip with 7-zip or whatever software. That way, if one pass code is compromised your other files may still be safe.

originally posted by: Attentionwandered
Format the thumb drive to Fat 32, that should work in linux and windows. Then, encrypt the files on an individual basis using .rar or .zip with 7-zip or whatever software. That way, if one pass code is compromised your other files may still be safe.

Thats good advice

The thumbdrive has always been Fat 32. The problem was that the software used to encrypt / unencrypt the data was supplied with the thumbdrive, and it only runs on windows. I only discovered this problem when I told a friend to back up their data to a thmbdrive before I installed Linux for them. It never occured to me that they would encrypt it!
His data can be retrieved on any windows pc, so thats ok, but it left me wondering about the best way to setup a thumbdrive that would work on both OS's, hence this thread.

The version I'm using (Fedora 20) has no issues with NTFS... at least not yet...