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Jun 29, 2020 How to Enable FileVault on Mac external USB Since most USB drives are formatted using the FAT file system, you won’t be able to encrypt it directly. First, you’ll need to reformat the external USB to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Thereafter, you’ll be able to turn on encryption on it. Here’s how to encrypt external drives in Mac OS X Lion. This process lets you encrypt USB External hard drives, flash drives and SD cards. OS X Lion uses Filevault2 with XTS – AES 128 bit. ^ After following Pavel's GUID partition advice, you could also refer to the following Seagate Knowledge Base article if you'd like to use our free Seagate Dashboard software to encrypt your drive. Just make sure in any event to be overly cautious with keeping your encryption passwords/keys extremely available.
Updated by Tim to Bitlocker for Mac Tips on July 5th, 2019
Encrypting a portable USB flash drive is a great way to protect sensitive data so as no other persons except you can open and modify the files. This guide will demonstrate how to securely encrypt a USB flash drive within macOS so that the data stored on it cannot be read nor accessed without entering a secure password.
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This article will introduce two solutions to encrypt USB flash drive on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra.
Solution 1: Encrypt USB flash drive with Bitlocker on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra
Truecrypt is not secure. With GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) now in full force, we have to make our drives being encrypted.
Up to now, Bitlocker is the most truely secure encryption solution built-in Windows. Although Microsoft has not implemented Bitlocker client for macOS, but with the help of M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac, encrypting USB flash drive with Bitlocker can be done on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra/Sierra and Mac OS X.
If you are a cross platform user, Bitlocker is the best choice to encrypt your USB flash drive and Bitlocker encrypted USB flash drive can be easily accessed on Windows without an extra software.
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Tutorial to encrypt/password protect USB flash drive with Bitlocker on macOS
Step 1: Download and install M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac on your Mac computer.
Step 2: Insert USB flash drive (The file system must be NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT) into your Mac computer.
Step 3: Launch M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac.
Step 4: Click 'Encrypt' button in toolbar of M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac.
Step 5: Select USB flash drive and then click Encrypt.
Step 6: Enter the password.
Step 7: Save the recovery key.
Step 8: After Bitlocker drive encryption completes, the USB flash drive will be password protected and then we can use M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac to read/write Bitlocker encrypted USB flash drive on macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8 Operating Systems.
Solution 2: Encrypt USB flash drive with FileVault on macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra
FileVault is a disk encryption tool built in Mac OS X El Capitan and later version, but USB flash drive encrypted with FileVault cannot be opened by Windows. The password you choose to encrypt your USB flash drive cannot be changed once the encryption completes.
Tutorial to encrypt USB flash drive with FileVault
Step 1: Insert your USB flash drive into your Mac computer.
Step 2: Open the Finder and right click USB flash drive in the left sidebar.
Step 3: Select Encrypt.
Step 4: Enter the password and confirm a password.
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Step 5: Encryption will take a few minutes; once complete, you USB flash drive will be fully protected with a password.
Related articles:
Encrypting a USB Drive on a Mac Made Easy
macOS 10.12.x “Sierra” Edition & 10.13.x “High Sierra” Edition
A YouTube video of these instructions can be found here!
(NOTE: This was written for OS X 10.12.5 “Sierra.” If you’re looking for the Mac OS 10.11.x “El Capitan” edition, click here. The original blog entry written for OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” can be found here)
macOS 10.12.x “Sierra” Edition & 10.13.x “High Sierra” Edition
A YouTube video of these instructions can be found here!
(NOTE: This was written for OS X 10.12.5 “Sierra.” If you’re looking for the Mac OS 10.11.x “El Capitan” edition, click here. The original blog entry written for OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” can be found here)
Like many of my clients and friends, I use a flash drive (also known as a “USB drive” or “Pen drive” or “Thumb drive” etc.), for backing up important files. One of the things I’ve noticed, though, is how many people put sensitive and personal data on these flash drives but don’t even bother to encrypt them. The reason it’s important to encrypt these flash drives is because these flash drives are usually physically small and can be easily misplaced, lost or stolen. If they are encrypted, you don’t have to worry about the data on them being accessible to someone that may have stolen your flash drive or happened to have found it lying around somewhere.
Apple’s Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” and later operating systems make it easy to do a full disk encryption of these flash drives. You can also easily encrypt Secure Digital “SD” cards and Micro-SD cards too! SD cards are typically what is used in digital cameras to record the images taken with the camera. Most Macs have built-in SD card slots so Apple has made SD cards very easy and convenient to use.
In order to encrypt a flash drive or SD card (we’ll call them “media” collectively from this point onward), you should either start with brand new media or prepare to reformat the media that you may already have. If your Mac has USB 3.0 ports (most Macs since 2012), you should use USB 3.0 compatible media for this project as on-the-fly encryption can slow down reading and writing to an external drive. Please note that when you reformat this media, you are effectively erasing it so any existing data (e.g. files, folders, programs, etc.) will be lost! If you’re using existing media, you should consider copying or backing up the data on that media to another media first so that you can then copy it back to the encrypted media later. All media seem to come from the factory formatted as FAT32 (a holdover from the old MS-DOS & Windows ’95 era) as this is a disk format that nearly all personal computers, whether they be Mac, Windows, or Linux, can read and write. To encrypt your media, however, you’ll need to format it in a Mac specific format called, “GUID Partition Map.” In other words, you cannot easily create an encrypted disk on the Mac without first having changing the format of the drive from FAT32 to GUID.
The first thing you need to do is insert the media into your Mac. Afterwards, press [COMMAND ⌘] + [SPACE BAR] to bring up Spotlight Search. Type in DISK UTILITY and the first item highlighted should be the Disk Utility application. If it is, press, [RETURN] to select it and it will launch.
In the screenshot above, I’ve selected my flash drive by clicking on it once in Disk Utility (in my example, it’s called, “Lexar USB Flash Drive” in the left-hand column under the “External” column heading. Once selected, I then clicked on the Erase tab. I then changed the format type to “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” using the drop down box as shown in screenshot. At this point, you can type in a name for your media (where it says, “Give Drive a Name” ). Naming your media can help you keep your media organized. After all, most of us have several of media, right? Giving them names helps us keep them straight! Click on “Erase” and once the formatting process is complete, your screen should look like the screenshot below:
Please note that the erase function sometimes fails. If it does, simply repeat the steps by giving the drive a name, selecting the correct format and scheme and clicking on “Erase.” Next, you want to find your media on your Mac’s Desktop and do secondary-click it (or hold down [CONTROL] and click on the media icon) and choose “Encrypt [your media’s name here].”
Next, the Mac will prompt you to enter an encryption password before it begins the process of encrypting your media. Please remember to use a password that is not only hard for someone to figure out but one that you can easily remember. Please also note that if you cannot remember the password you used when formatting and encrypting the media, then you will not be able to access the data contained on that media ever again! You will also be given the opportunity to give yourself a “hint” on what the password is. I’d recommend writing a hint that you can figure out but would be meaningless to someone who doesn’t know you.
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In a minute or two, you’ll have an encrypted flash drive or SD card ready for you to use! Remember to always drag your media off your Mac’s Desktop to your Trash to eject it properly. This step helps to prevent data loss that can result by simply pulling the media out of your Mac.
When encrypted media is plugged into your Mac, you will be prompted to enter the password you selected in order to access the data on that media. If you cannot remember your password, you can click on “Show Hint” and any hint you may have established while setting up the encrypted media will be displayed to assist you in remembering what the password is. Personally, I’d recommend that you not have the password remembered in the keychain (call/email/text me as to why!).
When encrypted media is plugged into your Mac, you will be prompted to enter the password you selected in order to access the data on that media. If you cannot remember your password, you can click on “Show Hint” and any hint you may have established while setting up the encrypted media will be displayed to assist you in remembering what the password is. Personally, I’d recommend that you not have the password remembered in the keychain (call/email/text me as to why!).
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While Apple’s Disk Utility program is easy to use, there are a few drawbacks to using it to create encrypted media:
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- The encrypted media can only be accessed with a Mac running Mac OS X “Lion” or later. Provided you know the password, you will be able to access the media and the data on it with any Mac running Mac OS X “Lion” (10.7), “Mountain Lion” (10.8) and “Mavericks” (10.9), “Yosemite” (10.10), “El Capitán” (10.11), and “Sierra” (10.12).
- The media is not compatible with Windows or any other operating system (i.e. Windows or other operating systems will not be able to access the data contained on the media). Most flash media come pre-formatted for use with PCs running Windows but your Mac can also access them. This process will make your media Mac only. It’s not a big deal unless you live or work in a mixed computing environment containing Macs and PCs.
- As mentioned above, you’ll need the password you selected in Disk Utility to mount and use the media on your Mac. Without it, the data on the media cannot be accessed.
These drawbacks, on the whole, though, are minor when protecting your data on media that is easily misplaced, lost, or stolen, don’t you think? Give it a try and you’ll see that encrypting media on your Mac is easy to do. If it’s easy and safe, why wouldn’t you use encryption to protect your data?
As always, Tech Me Back stands at the ready to help you with any questions you may have!