MAKE YOUR USB STICK INVISIBLE!
S So onlyl YOU can see what’s on it
USB sticks are great for moving files between PCS, but they’re also very easy to lose – and if someone gets their hands on your stick, they can access all the files stored on it. Unless, that is, you use Veracrypt to turn your USB stick into a password-protected, encrypted vault. This means that if someone tries to use e your stick, it will appear empty. Veracrypt can look daunting at first, but follow our instructions and you’ll have an encrypted USB stick in a jiffy.
STEP1 First, plug the USB stick you want to use into your PC. Veracrypt will format your USB stick during the process of creating your vault, so make sure you copy any files from it before you continue. You’ll also need to know the USB stick’s drive letter. To find this out, open File Explorer (Windows key+e), select This PC on the left 1 , then locate your USB stick on the right - in our example, it’s drive D 2 . If you’re not sure which drive is which, remove the USB stick, then plug it back in – the drive’s icon will disappear, then reappear as you do this.
STEP 2 Download and install Veracrypt from www.snipca. com/33664 (click the Windows Installer link), then run the program. Select Create Volume 1 , then choose the second option ‘Encrypt a non-system partition/drive’. Click Next, then select ‘Standard Veracrypt volume’. On the next screen, click Select Device. You’ll see a list of all the drives attached to your PC (internal, external and USB sticks), as well as their partitions. Look for the drive letter you noted down in Step 1. The entry should describe your USB stick as a ‘Removable Disk’ 2 with a single partition, and include its storage capacity 3 . Click the entry to select it, then OK, followed by Next.
STEP 3 You can skip through the next three steps of the instructions, leaving their settings as they are (this formats your USB stick, uses the default encryption method and creates an encrypted drive that matches the capacity of your stick). You must then set your password 1 . Veracrypt warns you if it considers your password too simple and therefore easy to crack, but make sure you choose one that you can remember – if you forget it, you’ll have no way of accessing the files stored on your USB stick.
STEP 4 Click Next, then move your mouse randomly around the screen for a few seconds - this helps Veracrypt generate a random number to use when encrypting your password. Then click Format 1 . Veracrypt will warn you once again that the process will delete the contents of your USB stick. Formatting can take a few minutes depending on the size of your USB stick. Click Exit once it’s finished.
STEP Before you can access the encrypted vault, you need to 5
‘mount’ it in Veracrypt (in other words, give it a drive letter). With the USB stick plugged into your PC, select a drive letter from the list to assign to your encrypted vault - we chose ‘S’ 1 . Then click Auto-mount Devices 2 . The software scans all connected drives and tries to mount any it finds. It then prompts you to enter the password you set in Step 3 3 . Bear in mind that when you plug an encrypted USB stick into your PC, Windows may warn you that you need to format it before you can use it. If so, click Cancel 4 , because if you format it, you will delete your encrypted vault.
STEP 6 Once you’ve entered the correct password, your encrypted vault will appear in File Explorer under the drive letter you chose in Step 5 1 . You can treat your vault like any other drive on your PC, copying files to it, then editing and deleting them. When you want to remove the USB stick, make sure you dismount the encrypted volume first by going to Veracrypt and clicking Dismount All 2 .
STEP 7 If you use your encrypted USB stick a lot, you can set it up so that Veracrypt mounts it as soon as you plug it into your PC. First, connect and mount the stick as in Step 5. Select the Favorites menu 1 , then ‘Add Mounted Volume to Favorites...’. Tick the option to ‘Mount selected volume when its host device gets connected’ 2 , then click OK. Now when you plug your USB stick into your computer, a Veracrypt window will pop up asking you to enter your password, after which it will mount your encrypted vault.