How to Encrypt your USB Flash Drive

USB flash drives are great because they are really cheap and you can conveniently use it to move data between computers. The only problem is when you store sensitive data on a USB drive and it can gets lost by mistakenly deleting it.

Now, follow the process below to encrypt your USB and its contents

Format USB drive in NTFS format

Firstly, you have to make sure the USB drive is formatted in NTFS format. Most USB drives are formatted in FAT16 or FAT32 format, which does not support encryption at all.
Double click on ' Computer' on the desktop locate and right click on the USB drive

Under the File system, click on the small arrow to pick the NTFS. Then mark the ' Quick Format. Click 'Start' to start formatting

Create an Encrypted Folder

Ok, now that your USB drive is in NTFS format and all the data has been erased, we can setup a folder that will contain all the encrypted data.

Go to My Computer, open the flash drive, right-click and choose New Folder. Name the folder anything you want.
Now right-click on the new folder and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced button in the Attributes section.

Now check the Encrypt contents to secure data box as shown below. Click OK and click OK again to close out the dialogs.

Now you’ll see the folder is in green ( see the diagram below), which means the data is encrypted. That’s it! Now you have a folder on your USB drive that is fully encrypted and viewable only by your user account on that one computer.