How To Make Pen Drive Password Protected In Windows 7/8/10

USB drives or Pen Drives represents a small storage unit that stores hundreds of GBs of files and folders into them. A lot of us often carry Pen Drives with us to backup important data. One of the reasons to carry pen drive with us is that of its portability, we can carry it with us anywhere. However, Pen Drives lacks a lot of security breach, anyone can access the data of your Pen Drive, so HowToCrazy is here to make pen drive password protected.

How To Make Pen Drive Password Protected In Windows 10?

Method 1: Password Protect Your Pen Drive Using BitLocker on Windows  Pro

BitLocker is an encryption feature in Windows 7/8/10 Pro and Enterprise edition, which supports to encrypt local hard disks and removable drives with either a password or a smart card PIN. BitLocker supports NTFS, FAT, FAT32 and exFAT file systems, meaning a USB drive formatted with any one of these file systems can be protected using BitLocker.You need to follow the below steps to put a password on the Pen Drive and restrict unauthorized access from others.

Steps involved in using BitLocker

1: First of all Insert Pen Drive into your Windows PC running Pro or Enterprise edition.

2: Navigate to “Computer”. Then, right-click on the Pen drive which you want to protect with BitLocker and then click “Turn on BitLocker” option.

3: Now Select “Use a password to unlock the drive” in the pop-up window. Then enter the password you want to set, reenter it in next field and click on “Next” button. It’is also recommended setting a strong password containing small case letters, upper case letters, numbers as well as special characters.

4: You will again see a pop-up that provides a way to back up your recovery key in case you forgot your password. You can either save the key to your Microsoft account, save to a file, or print the recovery key and keep it in a safe place. Choose a preferred backup way and click Next.

5: Now choose how much of your drive to encrypt. You have two options-

• Encrypt used disk space (faster and best for new PCs and drives).
• Encrypt entire drive (slower but best for PCs and drives already in use)The latter option is highly recommended. Click Next.

6: Now, you need to choose a new encryption mode or compatible mode. Since you’re trying to safeguard a Pen Drive, so it’s better to choose the compatible mode. Click Next.

7: Finally, you’re arriving at the last step. With some warnings carefully bared in mind, click “Start encrypting”. This might take a few minutes to hours depending on whether you are encrypting used disk space or the entire drive.

8: Once the encryption is done, you will see “Encryption of X: is complete” message. You may now disconnect the drive.

Whenever anyone inserts Pen Drive protected with BitLocker in the Windows system, it will ask for a password. After entering the password only, the data within the Pen Drive can be accessed.

Method 2:  Encryption With Third-Party Software: WinRAR

WinRAR enables you to reduce the size of files, which make it easier to email or store these archives. One of the best feature provided by Winrar is to password-protect the data inside the zip file if it is of sensitive nature. Here’s how to do that –

1: Get the latest version of Winrar and install it.

2: Select all the files on your Pen Drive, then do right click and select “Send to” followed by “Compressed (Zipped)”.

3: This will compress all the files in your Pen Drive then you can open it using Winrar.

4: Click on “File” and choose “Set Default Password”.

5: Set a password for your zip file and confirm the changes.

Now, every time anyone opens this zip file will have to enter the password to access the files.

You are always recommended to encrypt and password-protect your confidential and private files and folders so that no one can steal it at any cost. So, protect your Pen Drive with one of these methods to make it secure. In addition, if you have any query then you can always ask us and make comments.