Flash drives/thumb drives are becoming more and more popular and have enabled us to carry huge amount of data around. But the small physical size of these drives makes them easy to lose/misplace.

If you have some sensitive data on your flash drive, which you would rather not want others to see, and you lose the drive, then you might also lose a couple of night’s sleep. If you have such sensitive data then it makes sense that you keep them encrypted. TrueCrypt is an open source tool that you can use to encrypt your entire drive or just the selected files. Or you could just zip the files and use a password to protect them.

But make sure to have one plain text file called something like if-you-find-this, which has your contact number or email id and remember to leave this file unencrypted. In the event of somebody else finding your lost flash drive, they would at least have a way to contact you to return the drive. Now, don’t ask me how many people would want to return it. I know of at least one person who would do that – the author of this blog. .

You could also affix an address label on the thumb drive to increase your odds of getting it returned if found.