Sharing an encrypted drive between two computers

[Guest]

Can anyone help me to know if it's possible to use NTFS encryption on an
external USB portable drive and be able to access the content from two
different computers?

I have a desktop and laptop both running XP Pro. I have an identical user
account on both, name and password. It's a home network using a Workgroup,
not an Active Directory domain.

I can share the USB drive between the two computers and restrict access to
my common account name, having removed permissions on the drive for
"Everyone", etc. I set a special permission for this common account from each
machine - when viewing the permissions from one machine the account in the
list from the other appears as "unknown account" even though it's the same
name and PW.

Sharing the drive content works fine until I try to encrypt a particular
directory from one machine, at which point that content is no longer
accessible from the other machine, despite the common account. Is there any
way to do this or suggestions on what I should try instead?? I'm trying to
place sensitive files on this external drive from my desktop for travel
purposes, and I want the files as secure as possible.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Brian Komar [MVP]]

Can anyone help me to know if it's possible to use NTFS encryption on an
external USB portable drive and be able to access the content from two
different computers?

I have a desktop and laptop both running XP Pro. I have an identical user
account on both, name and password. It's a home network using a Workgroup,
not an Active Directory domain.

I can share the USB drive between the two computers and restrict access to
my common account name, having removed permissions on the drive for
"Everyone", etc. I set a special permission for this common account from each
machine - when viewing the permissions from one machine the account in the
list from the other appears as "unknown account" even though it's the same
name and PW.

Sharing the drive content works fine until I try to encrypt a particular
directory from one machine, at which point that content is no longer
accessible from the other machine, despite the common account. Is there any
way to do this or suggestions on what I should try instead?? I'm trying to
place sensitive files on this external drive from my desktop for travel
purposes, and I want the files as secure as possible.

Thanks in advance.

You must export from each host the current EFS encryption certificate as
a PFX file. You can then import the certificate at the *other* host,
into your user profile, allowing you to access the files encrypted at
the initial host.

Brian

 

[Guest]

This was exactly what I needed to know - it works very well now. Thank you
very much.