How can I add security to my hard drive backup that isn’t Time Machine?

[HappyDude20]

i have a 500gb external hard drive of which I have backed up everything from iMac into. I would love to place a password on this external drive so only I can access it but don’t se to know how to to that since I’m not backing up my contents using time machine. Any help is appreciate thank you

 

[marzer]

i have a 500gb external hard drive of which I have backed up everything from iMac into. I would love to place a password on this external drive so only I can access it but don’t se to know how to to that since I’m not backing up my contents using time machine. Any help is appreciate thank you

Try right-clicking the drive icon. Do you get an option to "Encrypt Drive..."?

 

[Honza1]

If you cannot encrypt in place (right click and "Encrypt drive") you can always reformat the drive with encrypted file format in Disk tools.

Keep in mind, that if you want this backup to happen automatically (e.g., on schedule) the system will need to have the password and then the drive is readable in that system You will be protected against someone reading the drive in another computer. But once you mount it to your computer you are backing, if must be read/write there. So, not sure what you are trying to protect against, you may need to think about this bit more...