How to Encrypt External Hard Drive on Mac without Erasing data – 4 steps

This article is about how to Encrypt External Hard Drive on Mac without Erasing data. We’ll show you how to use a Mac encryption program to encrypt a USB drive without losing data. The Mac has good encryption built into it. You can hide an external hard drive on a Mac without erasing it using Disk Utility or the Finder option.

How to Encrypt External Hard Drive on Mac without Erasing data

Look at points below for step-by-step instructions on how to do this:

• Encrypt USB drive in Finder
• Place the USB disk into the disk drive
• Open the USB disk
• Turn off privacy

How to Hide USB/External Hard Drive in Finder Options

Finder uses XTS-AES encryption, allowing you to encrypt USB drives and erase data.

The contents of the disk will be encrypted, and without a password, no one will be able to access it. Its function is similar to BitLocker To Go on the Windows operating system.

This tool encrypts data on removable drives to provide greater data protection.

Place the USB drive on the Mac
Connect the USB drive to your Mac and find its disk icon on the desktop or Finder sidebar, then right-click and select Encrypt “[USB drive name]” from the pop-up menu.

Note: If you don’t see the “Scan” option in the drop-down menu, your USB drive is not formatted using a GUID partition map.

To solve this problem, you need to erase and hide the USB drive with Disk Utility. Enter your password, verify it, enter a valid password if required, and click Encrypt Disk to start the encryption process.

You may have to wait several minutes for your drive to be encrypted, depending on the size of your drive and its speed.

How to hide an external drive on a Mac without erasing it with Disk Utility

To protect a USB disk with a password using Disk Utility, you must first erase the disk. If the volume contains files you want to save, be sure to copy them to another volume or to your Mac desktop.

You can only copy the encrypted format into it after the encrypted format is done.

Once the USB drive is empty, open “Disk Utility”.

2. In Disk Utility, select your flash drive from the list, then go to the “Erase” tab.

3. Click the Format pop-up menu and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) or (Case Sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted).

Place the USB disk into the disk drive

4. Enter the password and confirm it when prompted. Then click the “Select” button.

Enter the password and verify it

5. Click Erase to remove all data from the disk.

6. Once the encryption process is complete, you will be able to access the contents of the USB drive as usual.

How to unlock a password protected USB drive on Mac

The next time you insert a password-protected USB drive into your Mac, open Disk Utility, select your disk and click Mount in the menu bar.

A small window will appear where you will be asked to provide a password, enter the password to unlock it.

Note that the app includes an option for macOS to remember this password in my keychain.

Check the box, every time you connect a USB drive to your Mac, you will not be prompted for a password and you will access it immediately, like any other drive.

To change the password of your disk or partition, select it in the sidebar, then select “File” > “Change Password”.

decrypt the USB disk and turn off encryption protection

If you want to decrypt the USB drive in the future, right-click its disk icon on the desktop or Finder, select Decrypt “[USB drive name]” from the context menu, and enter a password to disable encryption protection.