Decrypt the USB disk and turn off encryption protection To change the password for your disk or partition, select it in the sidebar, then choose “File” > “Change Password”. Check the box, and whenever you connect the USB stick to your Mac again you won’t be prompted to enter the password and you’ll have automatic access to it, just like any other drive. Note that the prompt includes an option for macOS to remember this password in my keychain. A small window will appear where you will be asked to provide a password, enter the password to unlock it. Next time you plug a password-protected USB into your Mac, go to open Disk Utility, select your disk and then click Mount on the menu bar. How to unlock the password-protected USB disk on Mac After the encryption process completed, you’ll be able to access the contents of the USB flash drive as usual. Click Erase to delete all the data on the drive.Ħ. Enter a password and verify it when prompted. Click the Format pop-up menu and choose either Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) or (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted).Ĥ. In the Disk Utility application, choose your flash drive from the list and then go to the “ Erase” tab.ģ. After the USB flash drive is empty, open “ Disk Utility“.Ģ.You can simply copy the encryption process back to it after the encryption process is complete. If the volume contains files that you want to save, be sure to copy them to another volume or to the desktop on your Mac. To encrypt and protect a USB disk with a password using Disk Utility, you must first erase the disk. How to encrypt external hard drive on Mac without erasing in Disk Utility You may have to wait several minutes for the contents of your disk to be encrypted, depending on the size of your drive and its speed.

To resolve this issue, you need to erase and encrypt the USB drive in Disk Utility.Įnter your password, verify it, add a meaningful password hit if needed, and then click Encrypt Disk to start the encryption process.

Note: If you do not see the “Encryption” option in the drop-down menu, your USB flash drive has not been formatted using the GUID partition map. This tool encrypts the data on the removable drive to provide higher data security.Ĭonnect the USB flash drive to your Mac and find its disk icon on the desktop or Finder sidebar, then right-click and select Encrypt “” from the context menu. Its function is similar to BitLocker To Go on the Windows operating system.

The contents of the disk will be encrypted, and without the password, no one can access them. How to encrypt a USB/external hard drive in Finder optionįinder uses XTS-AES encryption, allowing you to encrypt USB disks without erasing data. Click the link below to get a step-by-step guide on how to do that: You can encrypt an external hard drive on Mac without erasing using the Disk Utility or Finder options. We’ll show you how to use Mac’s internal encryption program to encrypt a USB flash drive without losing data.

Erase external hard drive mac