Encrypt Drive Mac Os X
Oct 22, 2018 Tutorial to Encrypt Drive with BitLocker in macOS & Mac OS X. Download, install and run Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere For Mac. Right-click the drive you want to encrypt in main window, then click 'Turn On BitLocker'. Jan 24, 2018 To encrypt a drive, simply open the Finder and connect the drive to your Mac. Ctrl+click or right-click the drive in the Finder sidebar and select the Encrypt option. The disk will be encrypted once you enter your password of choice—be sure to use a secure one! M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac can easily open Bitlocker drive and then enable to read/write Bitlocker drive on macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8 Operating Systems after providing the password or recovery key, whichever it is on Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac.
So you have some files that you don’t want anyone accessing. Your Mac is already pretty secure, but what happens when you want to encrypt a USB drive?
This is where disk encryption comes in. Basically, it’ll keep your USB thumb drive safe by encrypting the data on it and requiring a password to access it.
You may not know this, but macOS actually has a few built-in USB encryption features baked into its software — letting you encrypt and decrypt USB drives and other storage media on the fly. Here’s how to use them.
Contents
- 2 Leverage Disk Utility on macOS to encrypt USB drives
- 3 USB drive encryption that works with Windows PC and Mac
Related:
Use Finder to encrypt USB drives on MacBook
As of macOS Mojave, you can easily encrypt and decrypt generic mass storage devices on-the-go using Finder.
This uses XTS-AES encryption, which is the same type of encryption that the macOS FileVault 2 system uses. Keep in mind that using Finder to encrypt a thumb drive will restrict its usage to macOS. You won’t be able to access the data on it on a Windows or Linux machine.
- Plug your thumb drive or generic mass storage medium into your Mac.
- Open Finder.
- Right-click the thumb drive in the left sidebar. It’ll be under Locations
- Click on Encrypt “(Name of mass storage drive)”. If you don’t see this option, skip to the note below.
- Finder will now prompt you to enter a password and a hint. This will be used to access the data on your thumb drive — so don’t lose it!
- When all of that is typed in, click Encrypt Disk.
Finder will then encrypt your thumb drive. Depending on how much data is on it, the process could take a while.
To access the contents of the thumb drive, you’ll need to input the password that you created earlier. There’s absolutely no way to reset this password, so make sure you write it down in a safe place or use a password management platform.
Note: If you don’t see the Encrypt option when you right-click the thumb drive, it means that the USB storage device isn’t in the proper format to use the baked-in macOS encryption. You’ll need to use the following method to encrypt your drive.
Leverage Disk Utility on macOS to encrypt USB drives
As we covered, if you don’t see the Encrypt option, it means that your USB device hasn’t been formatted with a GUID partition map — which is a requirement for Finder encryption.
To get the encryption option, you’ll need to erase your thumb drive and then encrypt it in Disk Utility. Of course, make sure to copy all of the data from your USB drive to a safe location. Somewhere on your Mac’s internal disk is a good option. Once your data is somewhere safe, you can go about actually erasing and encrypting your flash drive.
- Open Disk Utility. You’ll find it in Applications —> Utilities in Finder or in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
- In the top Disk Utility menu bar, click on View.
- Now, select the Show All Devices option to check it if it isn’t ticked already.
- Select your USB thumb drive from the left-hand sidebar. Make sure to click on the top option, not any subsequent device names listed underneath it.
- Click the Erase option in the Disk Utility toolbar.
- Give your USB thumb drive a new name.
- Under the Scheme menu, make sure you have GUID Partition Map selected. You’ll need to change this before selecting the Format. Which brings us to…
- Under the Format menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).
From here, you’ll be prompted to input a password and hint again. Like with the Finder method, you’ll want to keep this in a safe place because there’s no option to reset it. When you’re done, click on Erase.
When all is said and done, copy all of the data that was originally on your thumb drive back from the safe location. Once it’s on the drive, it’ll automatically be encrypted and password-protected.
Alternate method
Alternatively, you can also set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme to GUID Partition Map. This won’t encrypt your USB drive within Disk Utility, but it will allow you to encrypt it using the simple Finder method.
This may be the preferred option if you don’t want to commit to an encrypted drive and password immediately, but you want to be able to encrypt your storage medium on-the-go later on using Finder.
USB drive encryption that works with Windows PC and Mac
The above two methods will make sure that your data is safe and protected no matter what happens. But, of course, they’ll only work on macOS devices. This is because the Mac OS Extended format, true to its name, is only compatible with Apple computers.
If you need to access your data from a Windows PC or a Linux machine, then you’ll want to opt for a third-party encryption solution. A couple of high-quality options are DiskCryptor and VeraCrypt.
They’re both completely free to use and open source, but they don’t skimp on the encryption quality. In fact, both apps offer a variety of different encryption options — such as AES, Twofish and Serpent.
You can’t go wrong with either. They’re both also fairly simple to use, so we’ll refrain from offering any in-depth instructions on how to encrypt using them. Just make sure to encrypt your drive using a Windows- or Linux-compatible format like FAT32.
For more information, you can visit their respective websites.
If you use USB drives to carry information, it is always a good idea to encrypt the drive so that your privacy and security is protected in the case you lose the drive. This is particularly true if you use thumb drives to store personal photos or contract documents etc. We hope that you find these tips helpful. Please let us know in the comments below if you have any questions for us.
Mike is a freelance journalist from San Diego, California.
While he primarily covers Apple and consumer technology, he has past experience writing about public safety, local government, and education for a variety of publications.
He’s worn quite a few hats in the journalism field, including writer, editor, and news designer.
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Turn on and set up FileVault
FileVault 2 is available in OS X Lion or later. When FileVault is turned on, your Mac always requires that you log in with your account password.
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- Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Security & Privacy.
- Click the FileVault tab.
- Click , then enter an administrator name and password.
- Click Turn On FileVault.
If other users have accounts on your Mac, you might see a message that each user must type in their password before they will be able to unlock the disk. For each user, click the Enable User button and enter the user's password. User accounts that you add after turning on FileVault are automatically enabled.
Choose how you want to be able to unlock your disk and reset your password, in case you ever forget your password:
- If you're using OS X Yosemite or later, you can choose to use your iCloud account to unlock your disk and reset your password.*
- If you're using OS X Mavericks, you can choose to store a FileVault recovery key with Apple by providing the questions and answers to three security questions. Choose answers that you're sure to remember.*
- If you don't want to use iCloud FileVault recovery, you can create a local recovery key. Keep the letters and numbers of the key somewhere safe—other than on your encrypted startup disk.
If you lose both your account password and your FileVault recovery key, you won't be able to log in to your Mac or access the data on your startup disk.
Encryption occurs in the background as you use your Mac, and only while your Mac is awake and plugged in to AC power. You can check progress in the FileVault section of Security & Privacy preferences. Any new files that you create are automatically encrypted as they are saved to your startup disk.
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When FileVault setup is complete and you restart your Mac, you will use your account password to unlock your disk and allow your Mac to finish starting up. FileVault requires that you log in every time your Mac starts up, and no account is permitted to log in automatically.
Reset your password or change your FileVault recovery key
If you forget your account password or it doesn't work, you might be able to reset your password.
If you want to change the recovery key used to encrypt your startup disk, turn off FileVault in Security & Privacy preferences. You can then turn it on again to generate a new key and disable all older keys.
Turn off FileVault
If you no longer want to encrypt your startup disk, you can turn off FileVault:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Security & Privacy.
- Click the FileVault tab.
- Click , then enter an administrator name and password.
- Click Turn Off FileVault.
Decryption occurs in the background as you use your Mac, and only while your Mac is awake and plugged in to AC power. You can check progress in the FileVault section of Security & Privacy preferences.
Learn more
- Learn how to create and deploy a FileVault recovery key for Mac computers in your company, school, or other institution.
- If you're using FileVault in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade to FileVault 2 by upgrading to OS X Lion or later. After upgrading OS X, open FileVault preferences and follow the onscreen instructions to upgrade FileVault.
- RAID partitions or non-standard Boot Camp partitions on the startup drive might prevent OS X from installing a local Recovery System. Without a Recovery System, FileVault won't encrypt your startup drive. Learn more.
How To Encrypt Usb Drive Mac Os X
* If you store your recovery key with Apple or your iCloud account, there's no guarantee that Apple will be able to give you the key if you lose or forget it. Not all languages and regions are serviced by AppleCare or iCloud, and not all AppleCare-serviced regions offer support in every language. If you set up your Mac for a language that AppleCare doesn't support, then turn on FileVault and store your key with Apple (OS X Mavericks only), your security questions and answers could be in a language that AppleCare doesn't support.