Here Are 4 Easy Ways To Protect Your USB Drive Using A Password

How to Password Protect Your USB Drive (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA -Now, you can invest in an encrypted flash drive to keep your data safe. Alternatively, you can use a free app and achieve a similar level of protection.

In this article, VOI will show you how to password protect a USB drive and how you can encrypt files and folders individually, quoted from MakeUsOf.

Rohos Mini Drive: Create Encrypted Partition

Many tools can encrypt and password protect your data. However, most require administrator rights to run on any computer. However, Rohos Mini Drive works whether you have admin rights on the target computer or not.

The free edition can create hidden, encrypted and password protected partitions of up to 8 GB on your USB flash drive. The tool uses automatic on-the-fly encryption with a 256-bit AES key length.

Click Encrypt USB drive from the Rohos Mini Drive start screen, Select drive Set new password, and Click Create disk

This will create a password protected and encrypted partition on your external drive. Alternatively, you can only encrypt certain folders on your USB drive, which will create an encrypted container.

To close your Rohos partition, right-click the Rohos icon in the Windows Taskbar notification area and select Disconnect.

Save Individual Files With Password

As noted above, you cannot safely password protect an entire USB stick without using encryption. However, if you need a quick way to protect only a few selected files, you can simply save them with a USB password.

Many programs, including Word and Excel, allow you to save files with encryption.

For example, in Word, when the document is open, go to File > Info, expand the Protect Document menu. Then, select Encrypt with Password.

Enter your password and confirm to protect your document after completing the steps above. Finally, save your document and don't forget the password.

To password protect PDF files on your USB flash drive, you can use PDFTK Builder, which also comes as a portable application.

Use 7-Zip to Create Password Protected Archives

Archiving tools like 7-Zip can also encrypt and password protect your files with AES-256.

Install and run 7-Zip Right-click the file or folder on your USB drive Select 7-Zip > Add to Archive In the Add to Archive window Select Archive format and add a password Click OK to start the archiving and encryption process. Password Protect Your USB Drive With WinRAR

WinRAR is a shareware file archiver used in Windows operating systems. Like WinZip, it is useful during the compression of large amounts of data.

However, you can also use it to protect your data. This is especially true when you want to encrypt specific files or folders, rather than the entire USB stick.

Right click on the folder you want to encrypt Select Add to archive In General tab of next window, set new file name Select RAR as archive format Click Set password

In the next window, set a password, select the Encrypt filename radio box and select OK.

Your new RAR will be generated immediately and will require a password to unlock.