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There are some third-party BitLocker solutions, like Hasleo Software’s commercial BitLocker Anywhere ( www.easyuefi.com), but we’re going instead to walk through VeraCrypt, a free and open source drive encryption tool that’s easy to use and available on Windows, MacOS and Linux as well as a number of NAS devices. It’s based on the now defunct TrueCrypt.
To encrypt your external drive with VeraCrypt, just follow these steps: Plug in the USB drive you want to encrypt. Head to www.veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads. html and download the latest version for your system. You can download the installer version, but there’s also a portable version. Run the app once it’s installed.
The first thing you’ll see is a list of available drive letters. Ignore those for the moment – what we want to do is encrypt an existing volume.
To encrypt an existing drive, first click on the Create Volume button. In the popup, we’re not looking to create a new volume. We actually want to select the second option, to Encrypt a non-system partition/drive.
You’ll be given the option to choose a volume type. If you want to be extra secure, and don’t mind an extra decryption step, you can choose the Hidden option. This creates a second encrypted volume inside the first. You can put some “fake” data inside the first volume (called the ‘Outer’ volume) to make an attacker think they’ve got the information on the drive, while keeping your really sensitive information inside the second hidden drive. For most people this might be a bit extreme, so you can generally choose the first option (Standard VeraCrypt volume). We’ll assume here that you chose the first. Click Next.
Next up, choose the drive you want to encrypt. Click on Select Device, then find the drive letter of your USB device. Click Next.
You’ll now have the option to Create an encrypted Volume and format it; or to Encrypt partition in place. If you already have data on the drive, choose the second option and it will keep and encrypt existing files. If the drive is empty choose the first option. (Unfortunately, the second option is only available on NTFS formatted drives; so for many flash drives, which are formatted FAT, this option may not be available). Click Next.
Choose the type of encryption. The default option (AES) is strong. Click Next. After that, you’ll have a volume size option. When encrypting an external drive in place, you won’t be able to change this so you can just click Next.
Finally, you’ll be asked to provide and confirm the password for the drive (additionally, you can use a key file, which is a file of any type that you must have on hand to decrypt; for most people this is unnecessary). Enter the password and click Next.
You’ll be asked if you want to store large files, and then it will get to encrypting the drive. It may take a while, depending on your previous options.
Once that’s done, your drive should be encrypted.
Once the drive is encrypted, the only way to access the files on the device is through VeraCrypt. If you try to access the drive in Windows Explorer, it will say it can’t read it and it should be formatted (don’t do that!).
What you have to do instead to access an encrypted drive is open VeraCrypt. Pick an available drive letter from the list (this is the drive letter that the contents of the encrypted drive will appear on).
Then you click on the Select Device button and choose the volume you encrypted.
Finally, click on the Mount button. That will mount the contents of the encrypted drive as the letter selected after you enter the password.
That might seem complicated, but you’ll quickly find that it becomes second nature, and in return you’ll have an extremely secure drive, one that you’ll never have to fear if it gets stolen.