BuduLock

BuduLock from Mouse Click Enterprises is a free security tool that adds password protection to any folder in your system, even those on portable devices like USB flash drives. It can also prevent USB flash drives from working on your PC without the correct password. It doesn't disable the flash drive but rather prevents USB drives from working on your system, meaning no one can come along, plug in a flash drive, and swipe your data, infect your computer, or both. Your flash drives will work normally in unprotected systems.

BuduLock's compact interface is tabbed Folder Lock, Flash Drive Lock, and About, the latter tab including Web and e-mail contact information. That's it, aside from a Web link and Close button. The Folder Lock tab has a drop-down list of our system's drives, a compact tree view for selecting folders, and two large buttons, Lock and Unlock. We selected a folder and clicked Lock, which let us enter and verify a password. We browsed to the folder in Explorer, which displayed a small padlock icon indicating that it was secured by BuduLock. We double-clicked the folder in BuduLock's tree view, clicked Unlock, entered our password, and restored normal access to the folder. Preventing USB drives from accessing our system was just as simple. We clicked Flash Drive Lock, selected Disable Flash Drive, and then clicked Change Password to enter our password. We clicked Execute, and BuduLock advised us that our system was secure and to remove any USB drives. We inserted a flash drive in a USB slot, but our system didn't see it, although the drive's power light showed that the drive and port were active. We selected Enable Flash Drive in BuduLock, unlocked our drive, reinserted it, and Windows immediately recognized it. We'd like to see a context-menu entry for locking and unlocking folders directly from Windows, which would make BuduLock more versatile.

BuduLock is an easy-to-use tool for protecting your privacy and your system with passwords, and we recommend it to all Windows users, but especially when others can access your computer.