Learning how to password protect USB drive systems – meaning those little pocket thumb or flash drives – would be a good skill to have handy whenever the time comes to transfer data from your PC or laptop to these little drives. It is a good way of keeping others from accessing all of the data you might have stored on it. So take a bit of time to learn how to encrypt one of them.
The first thing to ensure is that whatever USB drive you intend on protecting via a password and encryption is empty. Once you’ve made sure of that, take the software program you’ve found – because it’s a bit inconvenient to go in and manually encrypt and password protect each file on the USB drive – and then download the program to the USB. Click “select device” and then click “OK.”
After that, you’ll need to then click “next” as a way of examining all of the different encryption methods that the software will present for your use. You will have a certain amount of volume or space available on the USB drive and will need to accept that space and then create a password. Try to come up with a password that is both easy to remember yet extremely difficult to decipher.
After you’ve done all that, the software will ask you to select a starting point that is random in nature in order for encrypting to begin. Click on the “format” link to set the USB drive parameters so that it can be formatted. Again, if there is any data left on the drive prior to formatting it would be a good time to then store it on the computer hard drive.
Once everything above has been accomplished, take the software that you are using and select “mount.” At this point, the software will ask you for your password. You should now enter it at this point. Once completed, the device will show up in Explorer and all you will have to do after that is select “dismount” and then take the drive out of the computer’s USB port.
The drive is now password protected and will also be encrypted and therefore very hard to hack. Additionally, nobody will be able to take your USB drive and easily examine any of the data you have stored on it. Keep in mind, though, that no drive is 100% safe from a concerted cracking effort, though encrypting and password protecting it will make that effort extremely difficult.
