How To Protect Your USB Drive Without Using Any Third Party Software

There are many ways with which you can protect the data in your hard disk either you use encryption software or you use randomly generated password to protect the data in your hard disk. But when it comes to USB drive how do you protect your data.

There are many third party software available that allows you some degree of protection but in most cases those software are available for purchase. The free version don’t offer much protection. So we have prepared this guide for you that will allow you to protect your data in USB without the need of any third party software.

For the purpose of this guide we will use the Bitlocker software which is natively available in windows. It is not widely known or used but it offers you both encryption and password protection of your data. You can use the bitlocker with windows 8 pro.

How To Use Bitlocker To Protect Your USB Data

1. Connect your USB drive to your PC or laptop and after it has installed right click on it and select turn on bitlocker.
2. The bitlocker wizard will launch so select the first option which is use a password to unlock the drive. Enter a password.
3. You need to save your recovery key in case you forgot your password and can’t unlock the drive. Normally you can either save the recovery key on a file or print it out. But windows 8 a new feature has been added which allows you to save the recovery key to your Microsoft account.
4. You can then choose whether your drive is new or is already in use.
5. After you click next you will come to the page where you will be allowed to encrypt the drive.  Wait a few minutes for the encryption to finish and then you are done.
6. To use your locked drive just plug it in the PC and you will be notified that the device you’re plugged in is Bitlocker protected.
7. Click on the notification and it will open up a dialogue box where you will be required to enter the password that you used to lock your USB drive.
8. Enter the password and your USB drive will be unlocked and ready for use.

There you have a simple guide that will allow you to use the Bitlocker on your windows 8 to protect your data in USB drive without using any third party software.

Do let us know if there are any other way with which you can protect your USB drive data without using any third party software.