How can I password-protect my USB stick for access on multiple platforms, without admin rights?

Question

I left my USB stick at college over the weekend and I was lucky enough to get it back on Monday. I decided to back up and password protect in case it happens again.

Back up all done, I went to TrueCrypt to password protect everything. I made a container, put my files in it and pt it on the USB stick. I went in today and discovered TrueCrypt can't mount volumes without admin rights, which I obviously don't have on the college computers.

I've been looking at alternatives but it's all been closed source paid software, or non-functional experiments.

Is there any program that will password protect my USB stick, and let me unlock it on an XP machine where i'm not an admin? Bonus: a cross platform tool would be very nice, for my Mac and Linux boxes. It'd be nice for it to work on them.

It doesn't need to be 4096 bit RSA encrytption with a reverse double twist hashing cipher. I don't care if it can be brute forced, I'm only trying to stop some guy who finds it deleting or changing my stuff.

Extra Bonus: best tool to remind you if you log off with your USB stick still plugged in. I tried a couple which worked at home, but again, not at college.

Answer 1

AFAIK, without admin rights you are gonna need a special USB drive, or you are gonna have to create some kind of container file and use a portable app to provide encryption. Essentially, you are creating something like an encrypted zip file and just dragging and dropping files into it.

FreeOTFE uses a similar format. It creates an encrypted container file and you use the FreeOTFE explorer to drag and drop files out. Without admin privileges, I'm unaware of a method to install On-the-Fly seamless encryption. . .