Tick the checkbox for Use a password to unlock the drive and create an encryption password.

Click Turn on BitLocker next to the selected drive.

On the BitLocker Drive Encryption window, select your removable drive under Removable data drives -BitLocker To Go.

In the Control Panel, click System and Security and select BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Click Start and search for the Control Panel.

Connect the USB drive you want to encrypt.

It uses the AES encryption algorithm with configurable key lengths of 128 or 256 bits to protect your data.īitLocker To Go is a version of BitLocker drive encryption for removable storage devices that you can use to encrypt USB flash drives, SD cards, and external drives (HDD and SSD) formatted in NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, or exFAT file systems.įollow the steps below to encrypt your USB drive with BitLocker To Go: Encrypting a USB Drive on Windows 10 Using BitLocker To GoīitLocker is Microsoft’s disk encryption utility that comes built-in on different Windows versions, including Windows 10. However, if your device is on Windows 10 Home, you can use a third-party disk encryption utility. If you are running Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education, you can use BitLocker To Go - Microsoft’s native disk encryption utility - to encrypt your flash drive. Read our full Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 review (opens in new tab). It’s expensive by storage standards, but the VP80ES is a solid attempt at providing an easy-to-use, transportable and secure repository. Out of the box, it comes with a soft carry pouch and two cables for USB-A and USB-C connections.

The storage component is an SSD, although this drive can only achieve reading and writing of around 250MB/s over a USB 3.2 Gen 1 connection. And, the drive will erase the contents if too many passwords are incorrectly entered.

Kingston designed it to cope with various potential attacks, including BadUSB and even physical intrusion into the mechanism. Secure encrypted storage devices once required software to be installed to provide a means to input the decryption key, but the Kingston IronKey Vault Privacy 80 circumvents the need for that with an inbuilt touch screen.Īvailable in 480GB, 960GB and 1920GB capacities, the VP80ES, as it's also known, sports FIPS 197 certified security and a Common Criteria EAL5+ certified secure microprocessor.

Bitlocker encrypt usb drive