Under Volume Type, click “Select Device” and find your flash drive.Ħ. Select “Encrypt a non-system partition or drive”.ĥ. Connect your blank USB drive and open VeraCrypt. Download and install Veracrypt from their official page.Ģ. It may require a few extra steps to encrypt a flash drive, but it offers more flexibility and allows you to choose your encryption and hashing algorithms.ġ. Veracrypt is a great alternative to BitLocker. How to encrypt your flash drive on Windows with Veracrypt Congrats, you now have an encrypted USB flash drive! This may take a while depending on the size of your USB.ġ0. If you are sure you are ready to encrypt your drive, click “Start encrypting”. Otherwise, choose “Compatible mode”, which is best for drives that may be used with older versions of Windows.ĩ. If you are confident that you will only use it with Windows 10 devices of version 1511 or later, then you can select “New encryption mode”. You will need this if you lose your password or your smart card, so keep it safe!ħ. You can either save it as a file or print it out. Choose how you’d like to store your recovery key. It must contain upper-case and lower-case letters and numbers.Ħ. For this blog, we will only use a password.ĥ. You can either use a password or a smart card (if your drive has one).
Choose how you will want to unlock your drive. It will automatically install BitLocker for you.Ĥ. Right-click on your drive and select “Turn on BitLocker”. Go to your file explorer and find your USB.ģ. Delete any data or transfer it to a safe place if it wasn’t empty.Ģ. How to encrypt your flash drive on Windows with Bitlockerīitlocker is a native encryption tool available on Windows 7 and later.ġ. This type of encryption is recommended for advanced users. Software encryption allows you to select encryption algorithms, thus giving you more flexibility.
You can also encrypt your flash drive with native software, which is available on Windows or macOS, as well as third-party applications. But this also means that you don’t need to install anything else or worry about updates. When you have a flash drive with pre-installed encryption, you are less flexible, as there are no additional configurations available. Other than that, it works as a regular flash drive. You will have to type the password every time you want to access your files. Some flash drives come with a small in-built chip that requires you to create a password once you insert the drive for the first time. If somebody stole your encrypted flash drive, they couldn’t access its contents unless they knew the decryption key. USB encryption can be done in two ways: by using specialized encryption software or purchasing a flash drive with altered hardware.
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