How to Password Protect External Hard Drive – Guide

External hard drives are a great way to store important data on the go. They are easy to take with you and can be used for both work and personal purposes. However, by default, external hard drives can be accessed from any computer they are connected to. So if you have important data that you want to keep safe, you should encrypt and password protect it.

External hard drives are becoming more popular because they are small, big in capacity and easy to carry around. An external hard drive can contain important and confidential files, including private personal information, family photos, tax and financial information, credentials, and more. Considering the security of your data, you should encrypt and password protect your external hard drive to prevent ulterior motives from stealing your data.

Password protect external hard drive with Windows BitLocker

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/ BitLocker is a security feature that is available on the Microsoft Windows operating system. It helps protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes.

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  1. Open the Start menu and type “cmd” (without the quotes) and hit enter.
  2. Type “netstat -an” and hit enter.
  3. If you see the following output, your computer is encrypted with Windows BitLocker: tcp 0 0 0:0:0 tcp_win_ipv4 192.168.1.101 tcp_win_port 443 udp 0 0 0:0:0 udp_win_ipv4 192.168.1.101 UDP port 443

Connect the external hard drive to your computer by plugging it into an outlet and plugging in the power cord.

To enable BitLocker on an external hard drive, right-click on it and select Enable BitLocker from the context menu.

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

To backup the recovery key:

  1. Choose a way to back up the key.
  2. Back up the key to your Microsoft account, a USB flash drive, a local file on your computer, or print the recovery key.
  3. When you forget your password, you can access the encrypted drive with the recovery key.

To encrypt your drive, you first need to decide how much of your drive you want to encrypt. You can choose between using a default encryption mode or creating a custom encryption mode. ..

You can now encrypt your drive by clicking on the Start Encryption button.

Final note

This guide will show you how to password protect an external hard drive. If you have any questions about this article, please don’t hesitate to ask us. Additionally, please share this guide with your friends and family so they can also benefit from it.