Is it possible to password protect an external hard drive

First, you need to enable BitLocker —Windows built-in encryption tool—on your computer. Plug the hard drive into your PC and follow the steps below. Re-enter the password in the provided dialog box and select Next to proceed. Windows will automatically generate a recovery key for the external drive. The recovery key is a spare key that unlocks your encrypted drive if you ever forget the password. BitLocker will encrypt a sector on the drive such that new data copied to the drive in the future is automatically encrypted.

Note that Used Disk Space encryption is generally faster; it takes a couple of seconds or minutes, depending on how much data is on the drive. Full Disk Encryption, on the other hand, could run for hours before completion. BitLocker will start the encryption of the drive when you select the Start encrypting button.

As mentioned earlier, the operation could run into minutes or hours, depending on the size of the drive and data it holds. Do not remove the drive from your PC without pausing the encryption.

Doing so could damage the drive. If you need to urgently use the drive during the encryption process, select Pause and unplug the drive. Two methods are available. Windows 10 comes with a disk encryption tool named BitLocker Drive Encryption, which enables you to use passwords to protect hard drives connected to your computer, including external and internal hard drives.

If you want to password protect an external hard drive in Windows 10 Home , please go to the second method. Step 4: Choose one location to back up your recovery key which can be used instead of your password to unlock your external hard drive. You can choose to save the key to your Microsoft account, a USB flash drive or a local file on this computer. Then click Next. Step 5: On the next page, Click Next. Then choose Compatible mode as the encryption mode and click Next. Step 6: Finally click Start Encrypting to start encrypting the external hard drive.

Step 7: Now just wait until the encryption process is fully complete. This takes a few minutes depending on the size of your external drive. When the external hard drive has been encrypted with BitLocker, the password or recovery key is required to access the drive on any device. You asked: How do I password protect a drive in Windows 10? Best answer: How can I password protect a folder in Windows 7 without software? Is it possible to password protect a folder in Windows 10?

How do I password protect an external hard drive Windows 7? See also What is Ubuntu default interface? Each encryption program will show you a list of all devices connected to your computer, so select the drive that corresponds with your external hard drive.

The volume needs to be created on this device. If you are asked what type of volume to make, select any "non-system partition" option since your external hard drive is not part of your computer. Choose the password you want for access to this drive. Make sure that it's something that you remember, or make a note of it somewhere safely, because if you forget your password you will not be able to access the drive at all.

Proceed with the formatting and encryption and then select the drive letter you want to mount your external hard drive is; you can choose any available letter, but this is done because, after formatting, you will not be able to access with the letter you used before.