


This screen allows you to choose your encryption options. If you want to keep any existing files, choose the second option. If your flash drive is empty or you want to delete everything it contains, choose the first option. Select the drive letter of the flash drive you want to encrypt (in this case O:).Ĭhoose the Volume Creation Mode. On the next screen, choose Standard VeraCrypt Volume. For the moment, we will choose to encrypt the entire flash drive. The VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard allows you to create an encrypted file container on the flash drive which sits along with other unencrypted files, or you can choose to encrypt the entire flash drive.

Start VeraCrypt, and click on Create Volume to start the VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard. creating a traveler disk, which allows you to run VeraCrypt automatically from the flash drive when inserting it in another Windows PCĮncrypting Flash Drive with VeraCrypt in 8 StepsĪfter downloading VeraCrypt for your operating system:.how to use a flash drive encrypted with VeraCrypt.the eight-step process for encrypting a flash drive with VeraCrypt.Versions exist for Windows, OS X and Linux.Įncrypting a USB flash drive with VeraCrypt is not as straightforward as it is with BitLocker, but it still only takes a few minutes. In addition, it has since been improved in VeraCrypt. But the code for TrueCrypt was audited and no major security flaws were found. VeraCrypt is derived from TrueCrypt, a well-regarded open source encryption software product that has now been discontinued. If you need to be able to encrypt and access files on any Windows machine, as well as computers running Apple OS X or Linux, the open source VeraCrypt offers an excellent alternative. Because source code for open source software is widely shared, many security experts feel open source software is far less likely to have any backdoors.įortunately, there are several open source encryption alternatives to BitLocker. You may be concerned that because Microsoft’s source code is not available for inspection, it could be susceptible to security “backdoors” used by the government or others. Encryption is a smart idea for protecting data on a USB flash drive, as we covered in our piece that described how to encrypt a flash drive using Microsoft BitLocker.īut what if you do not want to use BitLocker?
