How To Password Protect External Drive? So when I plug it in to my mac it will ask for a password to view it.
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How To Password Protect External Drive?
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Fishrrman
macrumors Nehalem
Reinitialize the drive using Disk Utility.
- On left, select the drive to be encrypted
- Choose "erase" panel
- From the popup, choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"
- Enter password when prompted
- Then, erase.
I believe the password you enter gets stored in your keychain.
When you mount the drive on YOUR Mac, it will mount automatically, because the password is already entered and stored.
BUT -- if you (or anyone else) attempts to mount the drive on a different Mac, it will throw up the password request and won't mount unless the correct password is entered.
If I'm wrong, others please jump in and provide correction.
- On left, select the drive to be encrypted
- Choose "erase" panel
- From the popup, choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"
- Enter password when prompted
- Then, erase.
I believe the password you enter gets stored in your keychain.
When you mount the drive on YOUR Mac, it will mount automatically, because the password is already entered and stored.
BUT -- if you (or anyone else) attempts to mount the drive on a different Mac, it will throw up the password request and won't mount unless the correct password is entered.
If I'm wrong, others please jump in and provide correction.
Thanks! Erase? I don't get the erase part. I don't want to erase anything. Just password protect what's already on it.
Fishrrman
macrumors Nehalem
[[ Thanks! Erase? I don't get the erase part. I don't want to erase anything. Just password protect what's already on it. ]]
I believe the procedure I outlined above requires that you RE-initialize the entire drive (that means "erase") in order to establish the encryption.
I don't think there's another way to do it (at least as far as creating encryption with Disk Utility is concerned). Perhaps someone else can suggest something.
So....
If you want to do it this way, you're going to have to:
1. Copy everything that's currently on the external drive to another location
2. Re-initialize the external drive using Disk Utility, and finally
3. Copy your data _back over to_ the newly-encrypted drive.
I believe the procedure I outlined above requires that you RE-initialize the entire drive (that means "erase") in order to establish the encryption.
I don't think there's another way to do it (at least as far as creating encryption with Disk Utility is concerned). Perhaps someone else can suggest something.
So....
If you want to do it this way, you're going to have to:
1. Copy everything that's currently on the external drive to another location
2. Re-initialize the external drive using Disk Utility, and finally
3. Copy your data _back over to_ the newly-encrypted drive.
If you are on Mountain Lion or newer, and assuming the drive is already formatted to the standard Mac OS Extended format, then just attach the drive and right click on it in Finder and select Encrypt. No need to erase the drive first.
This will convert the drive to an encrypted core storage volume that will prompt for a PW when you plug it in.
Last edited:
DeltaMac
macrumors G5
You do mean Mountain Lion or newer, correct? Option to encrypt from the Finder doesn't exist in Lion (unless I'm missing some simple setting, which is possible, I suppose)
Yes, you are right:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/22/#file-vault-2
Lion made encrypting the boot drive easy, but encrypting an arbitrary volume often required a trip to the command line. Mountain Lion remedies that situation. Just right-click any volume in the Finder and select the "Encrypt" command. You'll be prompted to enter a password and an optional hint, then encryption will begin in the background.