I should be able to establish a password for a floppy (Windows), right? How?
You can zip the files on it and password protect those.
But can I just set a password for the disk itself, so that it must be entered before any access is allowed to the file on it?
Short of encrypting the data, there’s little you can do to secure the contents of a floppy disk. You could conceivably set up your computer to require a password to access a particular diskette, all one would need to do to bypass that is read it with a different computer.
You could, but that’s not terribly secure. Encrypting with PGP would be much better.
Has zip encryption been cracked - programmatically, I mean, or are you talking about brute-force and dictionary attacks, etc?
Semi-brute force; we’re talking a matter of an hour or two on a modern system. The encryption scheme used for ZIP files is apparently rather weak.
If this thread goes off on a tangent, okay, but I just want to remind everyone that the OP is about protecting the entire disk, not just the files which are on it.
Now, to get back to the OP, which was
I gotta wonder… what is a Windows 3.5 disk?
Do you mean “How do I password protect a 3.5 inch diskette for any modern version of Windows?” Or was there a typo, and the OP was referring to Windows 3.1?
I think we all realise that. It isn’t possible, so all anyone can do is state that it’s impossible and suggest possibly workable alternatives.
Hmm, I was wondering what Windows 3.5 was!
I haven’t used it, but supposedly the program TrueCrypt can encrypt a floppy disk. I’m not sure how much space will be left on the floppy once it’s encrypted, though.
True crypt is a very easy to use program. It will mount an encrypted file as a drive. Once this is done you can use it as you would other drives. So you can put your floppy in drive A then run true crypt and see the files on say drive X. I use it to put encrypted partitions on my thumb drives.
There was Windows NT 3.5, but I’m assuming that’s not what was referred to.
Presumably though, if you stick a TrueCrypt disk into a machine that doesn’t have TrueCrypt installed, you’ll just see a useless, encrypted file on it (rather than being challenged for a password)?
No, you can include the TrueCrypt driver on the disk. Unfortunately, the user would have to have local admin rights to open the TrueCrypt volume, unless TrueCrypt was already installed on their PC. At least, that’s the case with the recent version that we are using.
I think that probably fulfils the OP’s requirements then, although perhaps not in exactly the anticipated way.
“local admin rights”? We’re talking Windows 3.5 here. Microsoft didn’t even start to deliver that kind of standard security feature until 4 or 5 versions later!
I was assuming that was exactly what the OP was referring to; it was the novelty of reading from someone who was using NT 3.5 that intrigued me. (Never used that OS).
I don’t think there ever was a Windows 3.5 There was Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, then Windows 95.
I think the OP is referring to a 3.5 inch floppy disk on a Windows system.
How about Windows NT 3.5?