By Sophia | Last Updated
USB flash drives are ideal for people to store, protect, share, transfer and backup their data because of their easy portability, small size and large capacity. If you store many critical and valuable files or some private information in your USB flash drive, you'd better learn how to protect it so that you can prevent it from unauthorized access by others. Using a password to protect your USB flash drive is a good choice.
There are several ways to protect your USB drive. We know that BitLocker for Windows 10 & 11 is one method available to password protect data and resolve data leaks, and other reliable third-party software is also available. Here in this article, we will give you a step-by-step process on how to password protect a thumb (USB) drive in Windows 10 & 11.
The advantage of using bitlocker is that most Windows comes with it, except the home version, which is secure and hard to crack. The downside is that once a USB drive is encrypted with Bitlocker, whoever uses the USB drive anywhere will need to unlock the bitlocker with a password in order to use it properly. This is inconvenient for USB drives that need to be used on a Mac (which requires special software to unlock the bitlocker), or for multiple users.
Step 1: Connect your USB flash drive to your Windows 10 computer.
Step 2: Go to This PC or press Windows+E button, find your USB drive, right click it and then select Turn on BitLocker on the drop-down menu.
Step 3: Then you will come to Choose how you want to unlock this drive action box, check Use a password to unlock the drive, enter your password to protect your USB drive and reenter it for verification, and then click Next button.
Tips: In order to make your password much stronger, you'd better make your password consist of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces and symbols.
Step 4: You will be asked to choose a way to backup your recovery key in case you forget the password. You are given three options, and they're "Save to your Microsoft account", "Save to a file" and "Print the recovery key". Select one and then click Next button to continue.
Step 5: In the interface of Choose how much of your device to encrypt, you have two choices, including "Encrypt used disk space (faster and best for new PCs and drives)" and "Encrypt entire drive (slower but best for PCs and drives already in use)". Choose the second one and then click Next.
Step 6: If you are asked to choose which encryption mode to use from the two given choices, Compatible mode (best for drives that can be moved from this device) is better.
Step 7: Click Start encrypting to encrypt this drive. Then what you need to do is waiting for the process to finish. It will take some time to complete.
Step 8: Once the encrypting process is done, a message will pop up and remind you that encryption is complete. You can disconnect the USB drive now.
If you don't have a bitlocker or if it is not convenient to use a bitlocker, a third party USB encryption software is a good choice. For example, iSunshare SafeUSB Genius, iSumsoft USBCode. These tools are small, easy to install and use. The downside is that there is no Mac version, so you can't use it on MAC computers.
Step 1: Download and install this software on your Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer. After launching it, plug your USB into the computer and make the software detect it.
Step 2: You can see there are four buttons displayed and only one can be pressed, that is-- Encrypted. Click on it.
Step 3: Then you need to enter with password twice with at least of six characters to protect the USB drive. After that, click the Encrypt button next to the progress bar.
Step 4: In a few seconds, the software completely encrypt your USB drive. Tap OK when there is pop up “Encrypted Successfully”.
If you wish to modify your important data but are afraid others would access what is inside it by accident, you can manage it on a virtual USB disk where others would access it only when they have a correct password. iSunshare SafeUSB Genius comes in handy, allowing you to manage data on a virtual USB disk to protect your USB drive without BitLocker while unlocking the USB drive.
Step 1: After you encrypt, the state of the USB drive is locked by default. Click the Unlock button to start unlocking the USB.
Step 2: Enter the encryption password, then click on Unlock at the right bottom.
Step 3: Wait a short time and the USB will be successfully unlocked. Click OK to complete.
Step 4: Now, you can go to "This PC" on your Windows 10 computer. In Devices and Drives, you can see there are two USB sticks in it, one of which is virtual.
Attention: Please note that the virtual USB drive only can be created while unlocking. You can lock it whatever you want, and when locking the USB drive, the virtual USB drive will not be visible.
If you no longer need to protect your USB drive, iSunshare SafeUSB Genius enables you to decrypt your USB drive, choose the Decrypt option.
Then you need to enter the password you protect the USB drive, after that, click on Decrypt.
In no time, the USB drive will be successfully decrypted.
That is what the guide is all about how to password-protect a USB drive without BitLocker on Windows 11/10. You can use the help of iSunshare SafeUSB Genius to protect your USB drive if necessary!
The above mentioned bitlocker, iSunshare safeusb genius and iSumsoft USBCode all encrypt the whole thumb (USB) drive. Many people do not need to encrypt all files, but only some sensitive files, in this case, encrypting the whole USB drive is a bit of a hassle. 7z/RAR and Safefile genius are similar software that encrypts a file individually, and is very easy to use for single files.
Reminder: When using 7z/Rar to encrypt files, you must set a strong password for the encrypted file, because for this type of encrypted file, there are many password recovery software to recover the password, a simple password is very easy to crack.
Safefile genius is a professional file encryption software, in addition to file encryption, it also has file shredding, file hiding, file icon replacement and other functions. After installation, the software supports interface and right-click menu operation, which is very easy to use.
Step 1: Download and install Safefile Genius on your Windows 10 & 11 PC.
Step 2: Click on Encrypt button to start encrypting your USB Drive files or folders.
Step 3: Click the Folder button, select the folder on the USB drive you want to encrypt, and then click the Next button.
Alternatively, you can click the File button to select a specific file and then click the Next button.
Step 4: After selecting the file or folder, you need to set a password of at least 6 characters and confirm it for a second time. Then click the Encrypt button to start encrypting the file.
Step 5: After completing the encryption, a successful encryption message will appear. A point worth noting is that iSunshare SafeFile Genius does not delete the original and unencrypted files, but you can choose to delete them by yourself.
If you no longer need to password protect the files on your USB, you can decrypt them by clicking the Decrypt button.
Select the USB drive encrypted files and click the Next button.
Enter the password you set for the encrypted file, and then click the Decrypt button.
Once the file has been successfully decrypted, you can view the details of the file.
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