How to Password Protect External Hard Drive

It is necessary to password protect external hard drives if you store important data on them. However, not many people know how to password protect external hard drives and some people assume that it must be very complicated.

After analyzing several posts on how to password protect external hard drives, here I have summarized the top two solutions that can help to password protect external hard drives effectively. If you want to learn the detailed steps, please keep on reading.

Solution 1. Password Protect External Hard Drive with Windows BitLocker

You can password protect external hard drives by turning on BitLocker. It is designed to protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes.

The feature is available on:

• Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.
• Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows 8 and 8.1.
• Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 10.
• Windows Server 2008 and later.

If you are using one of the above Windows operating systemss, you can follow the steps below to password protect external hard drives with Windows BitLocker.

Step 1. Connect the external hard drive to your computer.

Step 2. Go to This PC, find the external hard drive you just connected, right-click on it and select Turn on BitLocker from the context menu.

Step 3. To password protect external hard drive, you should choose the option Use a password to unlock the drive. Then type and retype the password you set and click Next button to continue.

Step 4. Choose a way to backup the recovery key. You can choose to backup the key to your Microsoft account, a USB flash drive, a local file on your computer or print the recovery key. When you forget your password, you can access the encrypted drive with the recovery key.

Step 5. Then choose how much of your drive to be encrypted and which encryption mode you’d like to use.

Step 6. At last, click the Start Encrypting button to encrypt your drive now.

Where to Find My BitLocker Recovery Key on Windows 10?

What is BitLocker recovery key? Where to find BitLocker recovery key on Windows 10? In today’s article, you will get 5 available methods to find it.

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You see, it is easy to password protect external hard drive with Windows BitLocker. Of course, there are other ways to password protect external hard drive if you don’t want to use BitLocker. Please keep on reading.

Solution 2. Password Protect External Hard Drive with Third-Party Encryption Program

If you are using Windows, in addition to the built-in BitLocker tool, you can use the BitLocker Manager feature in MiniTool Partition Wizard to enable BitLocker encryption for external hard drives.

Compared to the built-in system tool, it offers a more intuitive interface, making it easy to enable or disable BitLocker and check the encryption status of your disks.

Here are the detailed steps:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to enter its main interface.

Step 2: Right-click the external hard drive and click BitLocker Manager from the menu.

Step 3: Click the Turn on BitLocker button in the pop-up window to continue.

Step 4: Choose a method to unlock the drive.

Step 5: Select a location to save the recovery key. Then click Save.

Step 6: Select how much of the drive to encrypt, then choose the encryption mode.

Step 7: Click Start encrypting to begin the encryption process.

Conclusion

After reading this post, now you should know how to password protect an external hard drive. Which methods work for you? Do you have better solutions? We are glad to have you share it with us.