USB/Pen Drive/Flash Drive is a portable device and can be read on any device with a USB port. It can also be used with smartphones if you have a OTG adaptor handy. It makes the task of transferring important data from one computer to another, easier. Due to its maneuverability, we tend to lose it now and then therefore we risk to lose the sensitive data on it. To avoid the data theft, you need to secure the USB with a password so that nobody could intervene.
Though protecting your memory stick is not that simple, as protecting your Facebook or Instagram account with a password, as it would need an encryption to ensure the complete protection of the data.
See Also: How to Remove Virus from Pen Drives
There can be several ways to protect the USB with password.
- Protect Your Memory Stick without Software –
This is the simplest way of making any external device password protected. Follow these steps to enable password protection on your USB
- Turn on your computer and insert USB drive to your computer .
- As soon as the drive appears, make a right click on it and select Turn on BitLocker.
- You will see the BitLocker Drive Encryption page
- Choose “Use a password to unlock the drive”
- Enter password of your choice and click on Next.
- You will be directed to a page “How do you want to back up your recovery key?”
- You will be provided with three options:
- Save to your Microsoft account
- Save to a file
- Print the recovery key
- Choose “Save to a file” and it will ask for the location where you want to save.
- Choose the location and save the file.
- Click on Next
- It will ask you “Choose how much of your drive to encrypt” and provide you with two options:
- Encrypt used disk space only
- Encrypt entire drive
- Select Encrypt used disk space only
- Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the encryption.
To get clear idea, watch this video –
- Lock Your Flash Drive with USB Safeguard App
USB Safeguard is an application which enables you to encrypt your flash drive and lock it with a password. It is an application which can run from your USB drive. Moreover, it doesn’t require admin rights on your computer. It uses on-the-fly AES 256-bit encryption. The free version is limited to drive size of 2GB.
All you need to do is download usbsafeguard.exe and transfer it to USB drive. Run it on your flash drive and enter a password to lock it.
Whenever you want to unlock the device, run the software and enter the password and use your USB. Download tool
- Use Rohos Mini Drive To Protect USB Drive
There are many tools available to protect your data however, most of them require administrative rights. Rohos Mini Drive is a tool which doesn’t require admin rights and encrypts the data properly.
The free version can create a hidden, encrypted, and password protected partition for up to 2GB on your USB flash drive. Setting it up is very easy. The software’s intuitive feature detects the USB flash drive and sets the properties for the encrypted partition. You just need to choose a password to protect it.
The encryption is automatic and on-the-fly. AES 256 bit key length. It uses NIST-compliant encryption standards to keep the data safe. With the help of portable Rohos Disk Browser, which gets installed directly on the flash drive, no encryption drivers are needed on the local system.
Image credits: rohos.com
It also offers a portable encryption tool for working with an encrypted partition on any computer.
It works like Windows Explorer, displaying folders and files. This portable utility is handy when you don’t have access to your computer or laptop. Download tool.
These are the ways to protect your USB drive from snooping people and secure your data from any theft.
Try these methods and let us know what works for you.