Encrypted USB flash drive refers to setting a password to protect the contents of the USB flash drive, after encrypting/locking a USB flash drive, people need to enter the correct password to access the files inside. There are three main types of encrypted USB flash drives on the market: A. False encryption is just hiding files, setting a.

PAGE CONTENT:
Windows 10 BitLocker program
EaseUS free file encryption software

How do you safeguard your USB flash drive with a password? To tell the truth, there are lots of USB password tools available to meet your demands. For example, you can use official SanDisk SecureAccess utility to password protect SanDisk USB flash drives. Likewise, WD Security software is used to password protect Western Digital external hard drives. What if you prefer only free methods to encrypt, lock or password protect a flash drive along with files and folders in Windows 10? This article is worthwhile reading.

How to Password Protect Your Flash Drive with BitLocker

BitLocker is an encryption feature in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise edition, which supports to encrypt local hard disks and removable drives with either a password or a smart card PIN. As long as your USB flash drive has been formatted with NTFS, FAT, FAT32 and exFAT file systems, go ahead with the following guide to put a password on the flash drive and restrict unauthorized access from others.

Step 1. Correctly connect your flash drive to a Windows 10 PC running Pro or Enterprise edition. Make sure that your flash drive appears in This PC in File Explorer and shows up as removable drive G: or other drive letters.

Step 2. Right-click on your flash drive and you'll be presented with an option called Turn on BitLocker. Click it and continue.

Step 3. On the popped up window, you can freely set a password to protect the drive now. The password should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols to make it strong. The password you've just entered is the only passage to unlock this BitLocker encrypted drive the next time. Click 'Next'.

Step 4. Now you're given a kind suggestion to backup the recovery key with three options, including 'save to your Microsoft account', 'save to a file and print the recovery key'. Choose a preferred backup way and click 'Next'.

Step 5.Build a new query in excel 2016 for mac to pull information from sharepoint. Decide how much of your drive to encrypt. Read the explain texts carefully to learn the difference between the two options: 'Encrypt used disk space only' and 'Encrypt entire drive'. The latter option is highly recommended. Click'Next'.

Step 6. You'll be then welcomed by two encryption modes: new encryption mode or compatible mode. Since you're trying to safeguard a flash drive, you'd better choose the compatible mode. Click Next.

Step 7. Finally, you're arriving at the last step. With some warnings carefully bared in mind, click 'Start Encrypting'. BitLocker will immediately work and encrypt your flash drive with a set password.

Step 8. If the prompt message Encryption of X: is complete, you're successfully done. You can disconnect your flash drive now.

How to Password Protect Files & Folders on Flash Drive with Software

Being different from BitLocker's way to password protect an entire flash drive, there is another free way to protect your USB flash drive contents from being exposed to other people except those who have a password. It's by using a third-party free backup software with file encryption feature on it.

Furthermore, if you're unfortunately not a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise user, it's good to know such encryption software and make use of it for enhanced data security. All you need to do is to download EaseUS Todo Backup Free on your Windows 10 PC and take some minutes to start encrypting.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Todo Backup. On the home menu, you can choose to go with either 'Disk/partition backup' or 'File backup'.

Disk/partition backup allows you to create a full backup image of an entire flash drive data and then encrypt.
File backup allows you to encrypt only the selected files or folders on the flash drive and then encrypt.
For full protection of the flash drive, you're suggested to choose Disk/partition backup.

Step 2. Select the disk or partition to backup. Choose a destination to store the backup image, and enter a 'Plan name' or 'Description' to the backup image so that you can easily find it when trying to unlock.

Step 3. In the lower part, click 'Backup options'. This is where you're going to encrypt the backup image with the unique password.

Freehand 11 free download for mac. Step 4. To protect images with a password, click on 'Encryption option' and check Set Password box. The password adopts AES256 algorithm, which should be less than 15 characters.

Veracrypt

Note: keep your password confidential. If lost, data cannot be recovered. So, make sure the password is properly saved. EaseUS is unable to get encrypted images decrypted.

Step 5. After confirming the password, click 'Save'.

Step 6. Go on with the wizard and complete the backup task, by then you'll make the encrypted backup with a password in success.

Step 7. Completely delete your files off from the flash drive and leave only encrypted backup image there. Without your permission, no one could open or view your backups.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading..

The USB flash drive is one of the most useful tools at our disposal, as far as data transferand storage goes. At the same time, however, we risk losing sensitive files due to the small size of a USB stick, which makes it easy to lose or have it stolen. In this guide, you can find out how to password protect your USB thumb drive and keep your sensitive data safe with the use of several free applications.

Unblock any international website, browse anonymously, and download movies and Mp3 with complete safety with CyberGhost, just for $2.75 per month:

Table of Contents

Password USB protection - USB with hardware encryption

The problem with the USB drive is that we cannot lock the entire thing with a single password, as we would do with our computer or cell phone.

If we want to be able to have that, we need to buy a USB flash drive which offers data encryption through hardware encryption. We can find such a USB stick on Amazon. In fact, there are even USB drives with USB fingerprint sensor.

Naturally, in this case, we ought to have a relatively high budget. Obviously, USB sticks with encryption are considerably more expensive than the respective standard ones of the same capacity.

Furthermore, we might face compatibility issues with certain operating systems. Most will work on Windows (perhaps on Mac as well), but they might not work on Linux or previous Windows editions.

The steps to password protect your USB may vary depending on the USB drive. Generally, we will be asked to enter a personal password during our first use. The bigger the capacity, the more time the process will take.

Password protect your USB drive- Individual files

As mentioned before, we cannot password protect our entire USB with a single password without using encryption. However, the process of encrypting whole folders is rather time-consuming.

Therefore, as a first alternative, we can secure just the files that we are most interested in. Many programs, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, allow us to password protect our USB, and by extension, our files.

With Excel, for instance, the procedure is the following.

After we open the file we want to protect, we go to 'File'..

.. 'Info,' and then to 'Protect Workbook.'

From the collapsible list, we select 'Encrypt with Password.'

We enter our password in the window that will appear, and click 'OK.'

We will be asked to verify our password, and once we do, our file will be protected.

For us to password protect PDF files, we first need to use software capable of exporting into PDF. Most free PDF readers offer this choice only on their paid editions.

The free and light PDFTK Builder is a pretty good alternative. Moreover, it is portable, which means that we do not have to install it to run it.

Password protect your USB stick-Partition encryption

We can choose among many encryption tools to password protect our USB drive. However, most of them require administrator rights from the system.

This means that they are not particularly handy if we need to safely transfer data to devices on which we are not the administrators. Neither is it preferred (nor legal) to try to obtain an administrator's license.

We can skip all that by using the free edition of Rohos Mini Drive, which is perhaps the most widespread program for USB password protection.

The advantage this tool provides is that it will work whether we have administrator rights or not. Consequently, we avoid having to install drivers as well, if that was to be the case.

The free edition allows us to create a storage partition of up to 8GB on our USB drive, with the potential to encrypt, password protect, and hide it. The encryption Rohos uses is the typical one, using the AES algorithm and a 256-bit key.

Thanks to the Portable Rohos Disk Browser that we can install straight to our USB flash drive, we do not depend on any system during the encryption. As a result, we can retrieve our encrypted data from any location.

After we download the executable file, we install it on our system. Once the setup is complete, we can open Rohos Mini Drive.

Then, on the main page, we select 'Encrypt USB drive.'

The disk where Rohos reads our USB flash drive has been automatically selected on the window that we see next. If we want to select another disk or change the size of the encrypted partition, we naturally click on 'Change.'

Our next step is typing our password..

.. and selecting 'Create disk.' After a bit of waiting..

.. the encrypted partition of our USB flash drive is ready. As we will see, Windows can now recognize a separate disk, the 'Encrypted Disk (R:), apart from the USB flash drive.

If we open the encrypted partition, its contents will now have been formed like so:

Usb

Now, we can move any file or folder we consider confidential to this partition. For instance, let's copy-paste the PCsteps folder, which contains top secret information about the chief editor of this webpage.

If we connect our USB drive to a new system, as expected, the only disk that Windows can read is the USB (E:) Unit, which is non-encrypted.

By opening the USB (E:) disk, we will see that its contents have been altered. Now there are two more icons apart from the folder that we had already saved on the USB stick.

We're only interested in Rohos Mini. This application allows us to gain access to the encrypted partition, no matter where we connect our USB to.

All it takes is a double click on Rohos Mini, and the application window will emerge.

We type the password in the respective field, and Windows will notify us that it has already recognized the encrypted partition of the USB drive. We now have access to the partition we had created to password protect our files.

After we complete any task we work on in the encrypted partition, exporting our files is desirable. It is not necessary to remove the entire USB stick.

From the Rohos icon which has appeared on the toolbar, down on the left..

.. by right-clicking, we can choose to export only the USB drive with the password lock.

Password protect your USB drive- Total encryption

VeraCrypt is an excellent solution to encrypt our entire USB drive. It is a free and open-source application that also comes as a portable application, and it can be executed straight from the USB flash drive.

In this case, we have a disadvantage. The app will be needing administrator rights for it to function. At the same time, the free edition limits the maximum size to 2GB.

How do you secure your USB?

Have you used any of these methods to password protect your USB stick? Do you know any other useful ways of protecting our USB data? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments below.

Support PCsteps

Do you want to support PCsteps, so we can post high quality articles throughout the week?

You can like our Facebook page, share this post with your friends, and select our affiliate links for your purchases on Amazon.com or Newegg.

If you prefer your purchases from China, we are affiliated with the largest international e-shops:

Popular Posts

  • Encrypted USB flash drive refers to setting a password to protect the contents of the USB flash drive, after encrypting/locking a USB flash drive, people need to enter the correct password to access the files inside. There are three main types of encrypted USB flash drives on the market: A. False encryption is just hiding files, setting a.

    PAGE CONTENT:
    Windows 10 BitLocker program
    EaseUS free file encryption software

    How do you safeguard your USB flash drive with a password? To tell the truth, there are lots of USB password tools available to meet your demands. For example, you can use official SanDisk SecureAccess utility to password protect SanDisk USB flash drives. Likewise, WD Security software is used to password protect Western Digital external hard drives. What if you prefer only free methods to encrypt, lock or password protect a flash drive along with files and folders in Windows 10? This article is worthwhile reading.

    How to Password Protect Your Flash Drive with BitLocker

    BitLocker is an encryption feature in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise edition, which supports to encrypt local hard disks and removable drives with either a password or a smart card PIN. As long as your USB flash drive has been formatted with NTFS, FAT, FAT32 and exFAT file systems, go ahead with the following guide to put a password on the flash drive and restrict unauthorized access from others.

    Step 1. Correctly connect your flash drive to a Windows 10 PC running Pro or Enterprise edition. Make sure that your flash drive appears in This PC in File Explorer and shows up as removable drive G: or other drive letters.

    Step 2. Right-click on your flash drive and you\'ll be presented with an option called Turn on BitLocker. Click it and continue.

    Step 3. On the popped up window, you can freely set a password to protect the drive now. The password should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols to make it strong. The password you\'ve just entered is the only passage to unlock this BitLocker encrypted drive the next time. Click \'Next\'.

    Step 4. Now you\'re given a kind suggestion to backup the recovery key with three options, including \'save to your Microsoft account\', \'save to a file and print the recovery key\'. Choose a preferred backup way and click \'Next\'.

    Step 5.Build a new query in excel 2016 for mac to pull information from sharepoint. Decide how much of your drive to encrypt. Read the explain texts carefully to learn the difference between the two options: \'Encrypt used disk space only\' and \'Encrypt entire drive\'. The latter option is highly recommended. Click\'Next\'.

    Step 6. You\'ll be then welcomed by two encryption modes: new encryption mode or compatible mode. Since you\'re trying to safeguard a flash drive, you\'d better choose the compatible mode. Click Next.

    Step 7. Finally, you\'re arriving at the last step. With some warnings carefully bared in mind, click \'Start Encrypting\'. BitLocker will immediately work and encrypt your flash drive with a set password.

    Step 8. If the prompt message Encryption of X: is complete, you\'re successfully done. You can disconnect your flash drive now.

    How to Password Protect Files & Folders on Flash Drive with Software

    Being different from BitLocker\'s way to password protect an entire flash drive, there is another free way to protect your USB flash drive contents from being exposed to other people except those who have a password. It\'s by using a third-party free backup software with file encryption feature on it.

    Furthermore, if you\'re unfortunately not a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise user, it\'s good to know such encryption software and make use of it for enhanced data security. All you need to do is to download EaseUS Todo Backup Free on your Windows 10 PC and take some minutes to start encrypting.

    Step 1. Launch EaseUS Todo Backup. On the home menu, you can choose to go with either \'Disk/partition backup\' or \'File backup\'.

    Disk/partition backup allows you to create a full backup image of an entire flash drive data and then encrypt.
    File backup allows you to encrypt only the selected files or folders on the flash drive and then encrypt.
    For full protection of the flash drive, you\'re suggested to choose Disk/partition backup.

    Step 2. Select the disk or partition to backup. Choose a destination to store the backup image, and enter a \'Plan name\' or \'Description\' to the backup image so that you can easily find it when trying to unlock.

    Step 3. In the lower part, click \'Backup options\'. This is where you\'re going to encrypt the backup image with the unique password.

    Freehand 11 free download for mac. Step 4. To protect images with a password, click on \'Encryption option\' and check Set Password box. The password adopts AES256 algorithm, which should be less than 15 characters.

    \'Veracrypt\'

    Note: keep your password confidential. If lost, data cannot be recovered. So, make sure the password is properly saved. EaseUS is unable to get encrypted images decrypted.

    Step 5. After confirming the password, click \'Save\'.

    Step 6. Go on with the wizard and complete the backup task, by then you\'ll make the encrypted backup with a password in success.

    Step 7. Completely delete your files off from the flash drive and leave only encrypted backup image there. Without your permission, no one could open or view your backups.

    (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
    Loading..

    The USB flash drive is one of the most useful tools at our disposal, as far as data transferand storage goes. At the same time, however, we risk losing sensitive files due to the small size of a USB stick, which makes it easy to lose or have it stolen. In this guide, you can find out how to password protect your USB thumb drive and keep your sensitive data safe with the use of several free applications.

    Unblock any international website, browse anonymously, and download movies and Mp3 with complete safety with CyberGhost, just for $2.75 per month:

    Table of Contents

    Password USB protection - USB with hardware encryption

    The problem with the USB drive is that we cannot lock the entire thing with a single password, as we would do with our computer or cell phone.

    If we want to be able to have that, we need to buy a USB flash drive which offers data encryption through hardware encryption. We can find such a USB stick on Amazon. In fact, there are even USB drives with USB fingerprint sensor.

    Naturally, in this case, we ought to have a relatively high budget. Obviously, USB sticks with encryption are considerably more expensive than the respective standard ones of the same capacity.

    Furthermore, we might face compatibility issues with certain operating systems. Most will work on Windows (perhaps on Mac as well), but they might not work on Linux or previous Windows editions.

    The steps to password protect your USB may vary depending on the USB drive. Generally, we will be asked to enter a personal password during our first use. The bigger the capacity, the more time the process will take.

    Password protect your USB drive- Individual files

    As mentioned before, we cannot password protect our entire USB with a single password without using encryption. However, the process of encrypting whole folders is rather time-consuming.

    Therefore, as a first alternative, we can secure just the files that we are most interested in. Many programs, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, allow us to password protect our USB, and by extension, our files.

    With Excel, for instance, the procedure is the following.

    After we open the file we want to protect, we go to \'File\'..

    .. \'Info,\' and then to \'Protect Workbook.\'

    From the collapsible list, we select \'Encrypt with Password.\'

    We enter our password in the window that will appear, and click \'OK.\'

    We will be asked to verify our password, and once we do, our file will be protected.

    For us to password protect PDF files, we first need to use software capable of exporting into PDF. Most free PDF readers offer this choice only on their paid editions.

    The free and light PDFTK Builder is a pretty good alternative. Moreover, it is portable, which means that we do not have to install it to run it.

    Password protect your USB stick-Partition encryption

    We can choose among many encryption tools to password protect our USB drive. However, most of them require administrator rights from the system.

    This means that they are not particularly handy if we need to safely transfer data to devices on which we are not the administrators. Neither is it preferred (nor legal) to try to obtain an administrator\'s license.

    We can skip all that by using the free edition of Rohos Mini Drive, which is perhaps the most widespread program for USB password protection.

    The advantage this tool provides is that it will work whether we have administrator rights or not. Consequently, we avoid having to install drivers as well, if that was to be the case.

    The free edition allows us to create a storage partition of up to 8GB on our USB drive, with the potential to encrypt, password protect, and hide it. The encryption Rohos uses is the typical one, using the AES algorithm and a 256-bit key.

    Thanks to the Portable Rohos Disk Browser that we can install straight to our USB flash drive, we do not depend on any system during the encryption. As a result, we can retrieve our encrypted data from any location.

    After we download the executable file, we install it on our system. Once the setup is complete, we can open Rohos Mini Drive.

    Then, on the main page, we select \'Encrypt USB drive.\'

    The disk where Rohos reads our USB flash drive has been automatically selected on the window that we see next. If we want to select another disk or change the size of the encrypted partition, we naturally click on \'Change.\'

    Our next step is typing our password..

    .. and selecting \'Create disk.\' After a bit of waiting..

    .. the encrypted partition of our USB flash drive is ready. As we will see, Windows can now recognize a separate disk, the \'Encrypted Disk (R:), apart from the USB flash drive.

    If we open the encrypted partition, its contents will now have been formed like so:

    \'Usb\'

    Now, we can move any file or folder we consider confidential to this partition. For instance, let\'s copy-paste the PCsteps folder, which contains top secret information about the chief editor of this webpage.

    If we connect our USB drive to a new system, as expected, the only disk that Windows can read is the USB (E:) Unit, which is non-encrypted.

    By opening the USB (E:) disk, we will see that its contents have been altered. Now there are two more icons apart from the folder that we had already saved on the USB stick.

    We\'re only interested in Rohos Mini. This application allows us to gain access to the encrypted partition, no matter where we connect our USB to.

    All it takes is a double click on Rohos Mini, and the application window will emerge.

    We type the password in the respective field, and Windows will notify us that it has already recognized the encrypted partition of the USB drive. We now have access to the partition we had created to password protect our files.

    After we complete any task we work on in the encrypted partition, exporting our files is desirable. It is not necessary to remove the entire USB stick.

    From the Rohos icon which has appeared on the toolbar, down on the left..

    .. by right-clicking, we can choose to export only the USB drive with the password lock.

    Password protect your USB drive- Total encryption

    VeraCrypt is an excellent solution to encrypt our entire USB drive. It is a free and open-source application that also comes as a portable application, and it can be executed straight from the USB flash drive.

    In this case, we have a disadvantage. The app will be needing administrator rights for it to function. At the same time, the free edition limits the maximum size to 2GB.

    How do you secure your USB?

    Have you used any of these methods to password protect your USB stick? Do you know any other useful ways of protecting our USB data? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments below.

    Support PCsteps

    Do you want to support PCsteps, so we can post high quality articles throughout the week?

    You can like our Facebook page, share this post with your friends, and select our affiliate links for your purchases on Amazon.com or Newegg.

    If you prefer your purchases from China, we are affiliated with the largest international e-shops:

    ...'>How To Password Protect Usb For Use In Mac And Windows(30.04.2020)
  • Encrypted USB flash drive refers to setting a password to protect the contents of the USB flash drive, after encrypting/locking a USB flash drive, people need to enter the correct password to access the files inside. There are three main types of encrypted USB flash drives on the market: A. False encryption is just hiding files, setting a.

    PAGE CONTENT:
    Windows 10 BitLocker program
    EaseUS free file encryption software

    How do you safeguard your USB flash drive with a password? To tell the truth, there are lots of USB password tools available to meet your demands. For example, you can use official SanDisk SecureAccess utility to password protect SanDisk USB flash drives. Likewise, WD Security software is used to password protect Western Digital external hard drives. What if you prefer only free methods to encrypt, lock or password protect a flash drive along with files and folders in Windows 10? This article is worthwhile reading.

    How to Password Protect Your Flash Drive with BitLocker

    BitLocker is an encryption feature in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise edition, which supports to encrypt local hard disks and removable drives with either a password or a smart card PIN. As long as your USB flash drive has been formatted with NTFS, FAT, FAT32 and exFAT file systems, go ahead with the following guide to put a password on the flash drive and restrict unauthorized access from others.

    Step 1. Correctly connect your flash drive to a Windows 10 PC running Pro or Enterprise edition. Make sure that your flash drive appears in This PC in File Explorer and shows up as removable drive G: or other drive letters.

    Step 2. Right-click on your flash drive and you\'ll be presented with an option called Turn on BitLocker. Click it and continue.

    Step 3. On the popped up window, you can freely set a password to protect the drive now. The password should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols to make it strong. The password you\'ve just entered is the only passage to unlock this BitLocker encrypted drive the next time. Click \'Next\'.

    Step 4. Now you\'re given a kind suggestion to backup the recovery key with three options, including \'save to your Microsoft account\', \'save to a file and print the recovery key\'. Choose a preferred backup way and click \'Next\'.

    Step 5.Build a new query in excel 2016 for mac to pull information from sharepoint. Decide how much of your drive to encrypt. Read the explain texts carefully to learn the difference between the two options: \'Encrypt used disk space only\' and \'Encrypt entire drive\'. The latter option is highly recommended. Click\'Next\'.

    Step 6. You\'ll be then welcomed by two encryption modes: new encryption mode or compatible mode. Since you\'re trying to safeguard a flash drive, you\'d better choose the compatible mode. Click Next.

    Step 7. Finally, you\'re arriving at the last step. With some warnings carefully bared in mind, click \'Start Encrypting\'. BitLocker will immediately work and encrypt your flash drive with a set password.

    Step 8. If the prompt message Encryption of X: is complete, you\'re successfully done. You can disconnect your flash drive now.

    How to Password Protect Files & Folders on Flash Drive with Software

    Being different from BitLocker\'s way to password protect an entire flash drive, there is another free way to protect your USB flash drive contents from being exposed to other people except those who have a password. It\'s by using a third-party free backup software with file encryption feature on it.

    Furthermore, if you\'re unfortunately not a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise user, it\'s good to know such encryption software and make use of it for enhanced data security. All you need to do is to download EaseUS Todo Backup Free on your Windows 10 PC and take some minutes to start encrypting.

    Step 1. Launch EaseUS Todo Backup. On the home menu, you can choose to go with either \'Disk/partition backup\' or \'File backup\'.

    Disk/partition backup allows you to create a full backup image of an entire flash drive data and then encrypt.
    File backup allows you to encrypt only the selected files or folders on the flash drive and then encrypt.
    For full protection of the flash drive, you\'re suggested to choose Disk/partition backup.

    Step 2. Select the disk or partition to backup. Choose a destination to store the backup image, and enter a \'Plan name\' or \'Description\' to the backup image so that you can easily find it when trying to unlock.

    Step 3. In the lower part, click \'Backup options\'. This is where you\'re going to encrypt the backup image with the unique password.

    Freehand 11 free download for mac. Step 4. To protect images with a password, click on \'Encryption option\' and check Set Password box. The password adopts AES256 algorithm, which should be less than 15 characters.

    \'Veracrypt\'

    Note: keep your password confidential. If lost, data cannot be recovered. So, make sure the password is properly saved. EaseUS is unable to get encrypted images decrypted.

    Step 5. After confirming the password, click \'Save\'.

    Step 6. Go on with the wizard and complete the backup task, by then you\'ll make the encrypted backup with a password in success.

    Step 7. Completely delete your files off from the flash drive and leave only encrypted backup image there. Without your permission, no one could open or view your backups.

    (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
    Loading..

    The USB flash drive is one of the most useful tools at our disposal, as far as data transferand storage goes. At the same time, however, we risk losing sensitive files due to the small size of a USB stick, which makes it easy to lose or have it stolen. In this guide, you can find out how to password protect your USB thumb drive and keep your sensitive data safe with the use of several free applications.

    Unblock any international website, browse anonymously, and download movies and Mp3 with complete safety with CyberGhost, just for $2.75 per month:

    Table of Contents

    Password USB protection - USB with hardware encryption

    The problem with the USB drive is that we cannot lock the entire thing with a single password, as we would do with our computer or cell phone.

    If we want to be able to have that, we need to buy a USB flash drive which offers data encryption through hardware encryption. We can find such a USB stick on Amazon. In fact, there are even USB drives with USB fingerprint sensor.

    Naturally, in this case, we ought to have a relatively high budget. Obviously, USB sticks with encryption are considerably more expensive than the respective standard ones of the same capacity.

    Furthermore, we might face compatibility issues with certain operating systems. Most will work on Windows (perhaps on Mac as well), but they might not work on Linux or previous Windows editions.

    The steps to password protect your USB may vary depending on the USB drive. Generally, we will be asked to enter a personal password during our first use. The bigger the capacity, the more time the process will take.

    Password protect your USB drive- Individual files

    As mentioned before, we cannot password protect our entire USB with a single password without using encryption. However, the process of encrypting whole folders is rather time-consuming.

    Therefore, as a first alternative, we can secure just the files that we are most interested in. Many programs, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, allow us to password protect our USB, and by extension, our files.

    With Excel, for instance, the procedure is the following.

    After we open the file we want to protect, we go to \'File\'..

    .. \'Info,\' and then to \'Protect Workbook.\'

    From the collapsible list, we select \'Encrypt with Password.\'

    We enter our password in the window that will appear, and click \'OK.\'

    We will be asked to verify our password, and once we do, our file will be protected.

    For us to password protect PDF files, we first need to use software capable of exporting into PDF. Most free PDF readers offer this choice only on their paid editions.

    The free and light PDFTK Builder is a pretty good alternative. Moreover, it is portable, which means that we do not have to install it to run it.

    Password protect your USB stick-Partition encryption

    We can choose among many encryption tools to password protect our USB drive. However, most of them require administrator rights from the system.

    This means that they are not particularly handy if we need to safely transfer data to devices on which we are not the administrators. Neither is it preferred (nor legal) to try to obtain an administrator\'s license.

    We can skip all that by using the free edition of Rohos Mini Drive, which is perhaps the most widespread program for USB password protection.

    The advantage this tool provides is that it will work whether we have administrator rights or not. Consequently, we avoid having to install drivers as well, if that was to be the case.

    The free edition allows us to create a storage partition of up to 8GB on our USB drive, with the potential to encrypt, password protect, and hide it. The encryption Rohos uses is the typical one, using the AES algorithm and a 256-bit key.

    Thanks to the Portable Rohos Disk Browser that we can install straight to our USB flash drive, we do not depend on any system during the encryption. As a result, we can retrieve our encrypted data from any location.

    After we download the executable file, we install it on our system. Once the setup is complete, we can open Rohos Mini Drive.

    Then, on the main page, we select \'Encrypt USB drive.\'

    The disk where Rohos reads our USB flash drive has been automatically selected on the window that we see next. If we want to select another disk or change the size of the encrypted partition, we naturally click on \'Change.\'

    Our next step is typing our password..

    .. and selecting \'Create disk.\' After a bit of waiting..

    .. the encrypted partition of our USB flash drive is ready. As we will see, Windows can now recognize a separate disk, the \'Encrypted Disk (R:), apart from the USB flash drive.

    If we open the encrypted partition, its contents will now have been formed like so:

    \'Usb\'

    Now, we can move any file or folder we consider confidential to this partition. For instance, let\'s copy-paste the PCsteps folder, which contains top secret information about the chief editor of this webpage.

    If we connect our USB drive to a new system, as expected, the only disk that Windows can read is the USB (E:) Unit, which is non-encrypted.

    By opening the USB (E:) disk, we will see that its contents have been altered. Now there are two more icons apart from the folder that we had already saved on the USB stick.

    We\'re only interested in Rohos Mini. This application allows us to gain access to the encrypted partition, no matter where we connect our USB to.

    All it takes is a double click on Rohos Mini, and the application window will emerge.

    We type the password in the respective field, and Windows will notify us that it has already recognized the encrypted partition of the USB drive. We now have access to the partition we had created to password protect our files.

    After we complete any task we work on in the encrypted partition, exporting our files is desirable. It is not necessary to remove the entire USB stick.

    From the Rohos icon which has appeared on the toolbar, down on the left..

    .. by right-clicking, we can choose to export only the USB drive with the password lock.

    Password protect your USB drive- Total encryption

    VeraCrypt is an excellent solution to encrypt our entire USB drive. It is a free and open-source application that also comes as a portable application, and it can be executed straight from the USB flash drive.

    In this case, we have a disadvantage. The app will be needing administrator rights for it to function. At the same time, the free edition limits the maximum size to 2GB.

    How do you secure your USB?

    Have you used any of these methods to password protect your USB stick? Do you know any other useful ways of protecting our USB data? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments below.

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    ...'>How To Password Protect Usb For Use In Mac And Windows(30.04.2020)