How to Password Protect a USB Flash Drive and Secure your Files
Flash drives, thumb drives, USB sticks: whatever you want to call them, they’re more than keychain accessories; they can be used to carry essential information that you wouldn’t want to put
online.
But there’s one problem that plagues most physical media. If you lose a CD, external hard drive, or USB drive, anyone who finds it can get access to whatever is inside.
But just like protecting your smartphone with a password, you can do the same with your USB drive. You can encrypt the entire drive, protecting it from people who don’t have the password (i.e. everyone except you).
Follow the steps below enable BitLocker Drive Encryption for USB flash drive:

  1. Connect the USB flash drive to PC.
  2. Right click the flash drive > Select Turn on BitLocker (If you don’t see this option, simply go to Control panel > BitLocker Drive Encryption > Turn on Encryption for your external flash drive).
  3. Check the box: Use the password to unlock this drive, and create a new password.
  4. Go to the next step and you’ll get a recovery key that helps you later to recover your forgotten password > Save it.
  5. Go next and click Start encrypting.drive-encryption
  6. Wait for some time, until it completes. Encryption may takes time according to your USB size & performance.
  7. After completed, your flash drive look like below snapshot on other computers (To test, simply plug-in flash drive to another USB socket).protected-drive
  8. Open disk > input password > Enjoy!.
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  1. To Decrypt (remove password)

    Follow the steps below disable BitLocker Drive Encryption for USB flash drive:
  2. Unlock the drive using the password
  3. Right click on it > Select “Manage BitLocker” (or go to Control panel > BitLocker Drive Encryption)
  4. Turn off BitLocker for your drive
  5. Decryption may takes time according to your USB data, size & performance