Microsoft Weekly

Encrypt USB flash drives to protect your data

By Ed Bott

USB flash drives and SD cards are tremendously useful and also downright dangerous. These portable storage devices are ideal for ad hoc backups and quick file transfers, but if the drive is lost or stolen, whoever finds it has full access to your files, including potentially sensitive information.

To avoid that possibility, I recommend encrypting every portable storage device you own. Business editions of Windows (including Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise) allow you to encrypt these devices using a feature called BitLocker To Go. To perform the encryption, open File Explorer, right-click the icon for the portable storage device, and click Turn On BitLocker. (If you see Manage BitLocker, the drive is already encrypted.) Select the Use A Password check box, enter a strong, memorable password, and click Next to begin encrypting all local data.

If you're certain you'll only need to open the drive on PCs running Windows 10, choose the New Encryption Mode option. Otherwise, choose Compatible Mode, which uses an encryption algorithm that's compatible with older versions of Windows. (Sorry, you can't use a BitLocker-encrypted drive with MacOS or Linux.)

Note that you can't encrypt a removable drive on a PC running Windows Home edition, but you can unlock the encrypted drive and read its contents if you have the password.

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