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 do when it comes to protecting a USB drive with a password is to ensure that the drive itself is empty of any data. After you’ve taken care to make sure that that is the case, use any one of several good encryption and password creation programs and download that program to your USB drive. It will be necessary to select the device and then click “OK.”
Once you’ve done that, select “next” and you will be presented with various encryption or algorithm programs that you can select for use for that particular drive. You have a certain amount of space on the drive and once you highlight the space available, you will be directed to create a password. Remember, create one that you can remember but others will have a difficult time figuring out.
Upon completion of the above steps, you will be asked by the software to begin a random encryption at one point or another within a data point. Select “format” and then highlight drive parameters for the USB drive so that formatting can begin. Don’t forget to transfer any data that is on the drive at this point over to your PC’s hard drive if you don’t want to lose it.
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.
You will now have a fully password protected USB drive that is also encrypted, which will make it extremely difficult for others to access your data stored on the drive. Remember, no drive is ever completely hack-proof but you have made a good start toward preventing others from taking your drive and finding out anything on it anytime soon.
Get more help with how to password protect USB drives and check how to password protect a flash drive.
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