Hi,
I am a new convert to portableapps and have to say that I think it's fantastic!
Having recently wiped by drive due to it getting a virus, I'm looking to do the two following things:-
1) Is it possible to have the drive automaticaly scan for viruses/spyware etc when new data is put onto it?
I had the clamAV installed, but think that as I placed some data directly into a folder which I think existed outside of the portableapps partition, it missed it, I'd like to it to do an auto scan of both partitions of any data placed/modified.
2) Looking to secure the drive should I ever loose it and someone picks it up. Ideally I'd like to have a popup login window appear when the drive is inserted into a machine and should the person who found it not know my password (which of course they wouldn't), they would not be unable to access any of the data on the drive.
Looking for some advice on how best to go about creating this setup.
Many thanks!
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Okay, for the second one, you can use TrueCrypt to Secure the Drive. I did hear that U3 has it's own encryption on the menu, but I was too afraid of losing data to use it.
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Someone's gonna kill me for this but here it goes,
It sounds like you are describing a U3 drive.
[Search the posts using the search function in the upper right hand corner.]
This site used to support some U3 programs but no longer.
see
https://portableapps.com/forums/support/u3apps
The group in general has become rather ANTI U3.
It's is proprietary and only some of its apps are free.
You cannot install U3, it has to come with the drive.
I was introduced to portable apping and Portable Apps.com thru U3 and I have no problem with it. I only use it to secure the drive and for portable virus protection, which seems to be what you're looking for.
Everything else on the Drive is from here as it is free and of high quality
U3 has password protection on startup.
It may not stop the FBI, CIA, or an uberGeek from getting to your data but is that what you need?
You can also get a free trial version of a couple of proactive antivirus programs from McAfee and Avast [after the trial you would have to pay for them]. They monitor the drive for read/writes in real time for viruses.
I know of no non-U3 portable antivirus programs that work in real time.
Obviously if you don't want to buy a new drive this is not for you.
Also U3 is going to be "phased out / EOL" sometime in the middle of next year for a newer platform, but anything that works now will continue to work then, they just wont make newer programs.
You make use of the term "partition", do you really mean that or do you mean Directory[Folder]. If you meant partition, how is the drive partitioned.
Disclaimer: I'm just trying to respond to the guys question folks. It's not my fault that what he is asking for sounds like U3. Please don't flame/attack me for that. I try to be helpful and treat people with respect, please do like wise.
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
you can get avant for free (not a demo), i dont know if its portable or not though
If you meant "Avast" the only portable version they have is for U3.
If you meant "Avant", I've never heard of it.
Avast[standard] is free for home use.
, but I think you cant, if you could they'd tell you, right 
You know, it never occurred to me to write them and see if I could get a free license for the U3 version
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
1. There is no portable antivirus product that will fully protect your drive when you plug it into an infected PC. This includes Tim's mention of U3's antivirus product (which would require you to buy a new drive and then buy this piece of software which will only work on that one drive). If a PC is infected, it has free rain over any drive you attach to it. Period. ClamWin can be handy to see if it is infected. But, by the time you discover the infection, it's already too late. As for realtime, you don't really need it unless you download and run random pieces of software without scanning them.
2. You're looking for a drive with real hardware encryption built in. U3 doesn't fall into this category (it's security by obscurity). Kingston's DataTraveller Secure would be an option. As would iqBio's drive with a fingerprint reader. Or the new FlashLock drives which require a pin to enter (which will even work with Linux and Mac). All are compatible with the PortableApps.com Platform.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I do 1 a lot. I used to have Download Statusbar integrated with AVG, but it took too long to scan :).
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
1) a minor addition: ClamWin Portable should scan whatever you tell it to scan. But it is a manual operation; that is, you download a file, then you tell ClamWin to scan it or the folder it is in, or the whole drive. If you put a file in one folder and tell Clamwin to scan a different folder, don't blame ClamWin if it doesn't find the file. (ClamWin can scan all drives on a machine if you want it to.)
My strategy for such things is to download files and leave them around for a while (maybe a week or more). Then I scan them with an updated AV product. That way I give the AV companies a few days to catch up, instead of trying them on a potentially brand new menace. Or, if the site turns out to have been compromised, there's a chance I'll see a news report about it before I open the file I downloaded.
Of course if you don't have a good reason to trust the place where you download a file, you should NOT trust it.
Once a machine has been compromised, nothing about it can be trusted. If you plug your USB drive into that machine, you risk having any unencrypted data, and any passwords you type, sent along to some criminal's web site, and any executables infected with the virus. If you have plugged your USB into such a drive, it would be best to format it and restore from a backup, after changing all your passwords.
2) TrueCrypt (and some other products) provide strong encryption. But they do it by giving you a virtual drive which is encrypted. This is good -- you can have a portion of your drive which is not encrypted, on which you can put your "please return to ..." or whatever message. But it is also bad, because setting up a virtual drive (for the first time) seems to require Admin privileges, and not every machine will provide that environment. You could end up with a drive where the TrueCrypt volume is not usable (depending on what you store there). So there is a risk. (There's an "Explorer" that you can use to get at the files on a TrueCrypt virtual drive, but it probably won't let you run apps there unless you copy them to an unencrypted area first, which is risky.) If you always use a machine where you can mount the TrueCrypt virtual drive, it is a very good solution.
On a subject separate from TrueCrypt: I understand that it is very easy to bypass U3 password protection on some early U3 drives, and that some other later drives make it more difficult. While it remains "security by obscurity", the more recent drives may be "good enough" for what you have in mind, if you don't plan to store nuclear secrets or your passwords in clear text. It will probably keep "honest people" from casually browsing through your data. If, for example, you use KeePass Portable for passwords, set a strong password on Firefox's Security Device, and take some other precautions, you may decide that you have mitigated most of the risk.
If you want real security in a USB device, John mentions some hardware encrypted drives that don't require admin privileges to operate; there are others that show up with a search in the forums or an Internet search engine. You need more than just a password; you need strong encryption, with a well-implemented encryption scheme such as Rijndael (also called AES). Or you might decide it is overkill. It's up to you.
MC