How to Password Protect Flash Drive Windows 10

How do you safeguard your USB flash drive with a password? To tell the truth, there are lots of USB password tools available to meet your demands. For example, you can use official SanDisk SecureAccess utility to password protect SanDisk USB flash drives. Likewise, WD Security software is used to password protect Western Digital external hard drives. What if you prefer practical methods to encrypt, lock or password protect a flash drive along with files and folders in Windows 10? This article is worthwhile reading.

How to Password Protect Your Flash Drive with BitLocker

BitLocker is an encryption feature in Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise edition, which supports to encrypt local hard disks and removable drives with either a password or a smart card PIN. As long as your USB flash drive has been formatted with NTFS, FAT, FAT32 and exFAT file systems, go ahead with the following guide to put a password on the flash drive and restrict unauthorized access from others.

Step 1. Correctly connect your flash drive to a Windows 10 PC running Pro or Enterprise edition. Make sure that your flash drive appears in This PC in File Explorer and shows up as removable drive G: or other drive letters.

Step 2. Right-click on your flash drive and you'll be presented with an option called Turn on BitLocker. Click it and continue.

Step 3. On the popped up window, you can freely set a password to protect the drive now. The password should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols to make it strong. The password you've just entered is the only passage to unlock this BitLocker encrypted drive the next time. Click "Next".

Step 4. Now you're given a kind suggestion to backup the recovery key with three options, including "save to your Microsoft account", "save to a file and print the recovery key". Choose a preferred backup way and click "Next".

Step 5. Decide how much of your drive to encrypt. Read the explain texts carefully to learn the difference between the two options: "Encrypt used disk space only" and "Encrypt entire drive". The latter option is highly recommended. Click "Next".

Step 6. You'll be then welcomed by two encryption modes: new encryption mode or compatible mode. Since you're trying to safeguard a flash drive, you'd better choose the compatible mode. Click Next.

Step 7. Finally, you're arriving at the last step. With some warnings carefully bared in mind, click "Start Encrypting". BitLocker will immediately work and encrypt your flash drive with a set password.

Step 8. If the prompt message Encryption of X: is complete, you're successfully done. You can disconnect your flash drive now.

How to Password Protect Files & Folders on Flash Drive with Software

Being different from BitLocker's way to password protect an entire flash drive, there is another effective way to protect your USB flash drive contents from being exposed to other people except those who have a password. It's by using a third-party file backup software with file encryption feature on it.

Furthermore, if you're unfortunately not a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise user, it's good to know such encryption software and make use of it for enhanced data security. All you need to do is to download EaseUS Todo Backup on your Windows 10 PC and take some minutes to start encrypting.

Step 1. To begin the backup process, click the Select backup contents button.

Step 2. Four data backup categories are listed: File, Disk, OS, and Mail.

Step 3. Lists of both local and network files are shown on the left-hand side of the screen. Expanding the directory so that you can choose the files to back up.

Step 4. Follow the guidance on the screen and choose the place where you want to store the back up.

Make sure that the backup is encrypted and set the backup schedule by clicking Options in Backup Options. You can also choose to start the backup at a certain time in Backup Scheme by clicking Options. There are many other customizable options that you can look into.

Step 5. You can store the backup file either on your computer, in EaseUS's cloud service, or on a network-attached storage device (NAS).

Step 6. EaseUS Todo Backup enables customers store backup copies of their files on a third-party cloud drive or on the company's own cloud storage.

If you want to back up your data on a third-party cloud drive, select Local Drive and scroll down to add Cloud Device. Then fill in your account information.

Click EaseUS Cloud, then sign up and log in with your EaseUS account if you wish to store backup files to EaseUS' own cloud storage service.

Step 7. Click on Backup Now to start a backup.  When the backup process is done, it will display as a card on the left-hand side of the screen. A right-click will let you see more about how to handle the backup job in more depth.