Introduction to your Personal Secure Drive

Personal Secure Drive (PSD) provides a protected storage area for sensitive data. You can set up one or more Personal Secure Drives with User Initialization Wizard.

When you set up a Personal Secure Drive, it looks like any other drive on your computer: you can create files and folders on your Personal Secure Drive, and access them in the same way you do with files and folders on other drives. There is no limit on the types of files that can be saved on the Personal Secure Drive.

The Personal Secure Drive is different from ordinary drives in two key respects:

1. The data is encrypted.
2. Only you can see and access it.

Encryption

Data on the Personal Secure Drive is automatically protected using advanced cryptographic techniques including the AES and RSA algorithms. When you save a file or folder on your Personal Secure Drive, it is instantly encrypted. You can create files and folders on your Personal Secure Drive, or move them from ordinary drives to your Personal Secure Drive. Files are automatically encrypted when placed on your Personal Secure Drive. Similarly, if you access files or folders or copy them from your Personal Secure Drive to ordinary drives, they are automatically decrypted. You do not need to perform any special procedures to protect your files or folders; all encryption and decryption is handled automatically.

How to protect existing files and folders: Move existing files and folders to your PSD to protect them. If you copy files and folders to your PSD without deleting them from their original location, unencrypted copies will remain in the original location.

Server Mode

In server mode, PSD settings are managed by Trusted Computing Management Server. This means that PSD settings are automatically migrated like other user credentials and certificates (see Migrating Keys to other Systems).

The PSD drive image file is not migrated.

It is recommended to configure the PSD on a removable media (e.g. USB flash drive) which allows you to take your PSD drive image file with you.

If you decide to configure your PSD on a fixed media (e.g. your local hard disk), and you want to use it on another platform, you should backup your PSD drive image file on the first platform and restore it on the other platform (see Backup and Restore Security Platform Data). Note that in this case you are working on different physical copies of your PSD then.

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