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Password protect new external hard drive

Lizziejh

Lizziejh

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 12, 2016
114
17
UK
I have two new external hard drives which I need to password protect. How do I do this please, in simple terms, I'm not a wizkid! Thanks so much.

I am using my Macbook pro 13 MacOS High Sierra v10.13.6 and two Toshiba external drives
 
Simply right click on the drive in Finder and choose Encrypt. It’ll then ask you to set a password. But I believe this encryption only works in macOS, meaning if someone were to try to read the drive from another OS, it may still be readable. But hopefully someone can correct me on this.
 
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bsamcash said:
Simply right click on the drive in Finder and choose Encrypt. It’ll then ask you to set a password. But I believe this encryption only works in macOS, meaning if someone were to try to read the drive from another OS, it may still be readable. But hopefully someone can correct me on this.
Click to expand...

What? If the drive is formatted in either HFS or APFS, the OS used to access the drive would have to be able to mount a drive with the format scheme ... and then, if the drive is encrypted, one would need the encryption key to access the content. It would NOT be readable anywhere without the encryption key, and with out the ability to mount an HFS of APFS (depending on the format), the drive would not even be accessible.
 
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dwfaust said:
What? If the drive is formatted in either HFS or APFS, the OS used to access the drive would have to be able to mount a drive with the format scheme ... and then, if the drive is encrypted, one would need the encryption key to access the content. It would NOT be readable anywhere without the encryption key, and with out the ability to mount an HFS of APFS (depending on the format), the drive would not even be accessible.
Click to expand...
If you can confirm that no Linux OS can mount and read Apple formats, then I guess OP is good to go. I’m just not sure myself.
 
bsamcash said:
If you can confirm that no Linux OS can mount and read Apple formats, then I guess OP is good to go. I’m just not sure myself.
Click to expand...
I can confirm that a wide variety of Linux distributions have been able to read Apple's HFS+ filesystem since the late Nineties: Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, SuSE, Gentoo, and more. Same with FreeBSD.

I don't know about APFS but I'm 99% sure that a quick Internet search (yeah, that antiquated behavior people used to do ten years ago) will give you some sort of confirmation about that. I would hesitate to guess that someone has written an APFS extension for the Linux kernel though.

I am also 99.99% sure that if there is a way to encrypt an external hard drive on macOS, there will be an officially sanctioned method of doing so on the Apple Support site. Since I'm not up to playing human search engine today, I will leave it as an exercise to others to find this purported support document.

Or you to go to the only craps table known as YouTube and seek out a video from some vlogger pundit wizard.

OP is not the first person in the macOS's twenty year history who has desired to encrypt an external hard drive.
 
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Erehy Dobon said:
I can confirm that a wide variety of Linux distributions have been able to read Apple's HFS+ filesystem since the late Nineties: Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, SuSE, Gentoo, and more. Same with FreeBSD.
Click to expand...
I was being sarcastic. The point I was making is OP can indeed encrypt the drive, but that will likely only be effective against macOS. Someone who wanted the data can get it.
 
bsamcash said:
I was being sarcastic. The point I was making is OP can indeed encrypt the drive, but that will likely only be effective against macOS. Someone who wanted the data can get it.
Click to expand...
If you use MacOS to encrypt your drive, then MacOS can decrypt it if you give it the password. Another OS may fail to decrypt it even with the right password, but no OS on earth will decrypt it without a password. Nobody can get at the data without the password.
 
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bsamcash said:
Simply right click on the drive in Finder and choose Encrypt. It’ll then ask you to set a password. But I believe this encryption only works in macOS, meaning if someone were to try to read the drive from another OS, it may still be readable. But hopefully someone can correct me on this.
Click to expand...
Hi - I did that but the drives are still not password protected.
[automerge]1594237775[/automerge]
So most of the other reply’s I don’t really understand.

Is there a recommended programme that will enable me to p/w protect my drives?
 
Lizziejh said:
I did that but the drives are still not password protected.
Click to expand...
They will be. It takes time, maybe even days. If you right click and it says, “encrypting...” it’s not done. When it finished it’ll say “Decrypt...”

If you want to see the status of the ongoing HFS+ encryption, type “diskutil cs list” in terminal. For an APFS disk, the corresponding terminal command is “diskutil apfs list“. Look for conversion progress.
 
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It is also important to keep in mind that this encryption only works with HFS+ and APFS-formatted drives. Should your external drives be FAT32 or exFAT-formatted you will not be able to encrypt them without third-party software such as VeraCrypt.

Also, don't listen to what @bsamcash said. An encrypted drive that would only be encrypted on system A but complete open on system B would be completely pointless. Once your drives are encrypted they are encrypted on every system that has a filesystem driver to read them, be it Windows, Linux or macOS.
 
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Allow me to explain my misinformation. I have had many situations in which Windows will claim to password protect a drive or volume, but if it’s mounted on Linux or macOS, it’s entirely readable.

I apologize.
 
bsamcash said:
Allow me to explain my misinformation. I have had many situations in which Windows will claim to password protect a drive or volume, but if it’s mounted on Linux or macOS, it’s entirely readable.
Click to expand...
"Password protection" isn't necessarily the same as encryption. That is, one can have something that's pasword-protected, but doesn't use encryption. The protection may well be weak or trivial to defeat, depending on the mechanism employed. For example, suppose a driver checks for a password match before allowing access. That's a pretty simple gateway, which can be circumvented with a different driver or different OS that goes directly to the disk blocks. In other words, the driver alone provides password protection, and the data is left entirely in cleartext.

Encryption, on the other hand, always requires a key of some kind in order to gain access. The data at rest, stored on the drive's blocks, are always kept encrypted. They can only be decrypted using the correct algorithm and key. The key may be derived from a password, or from a hardware device, or other means.

Some details of FileVault 2 full-disk encryption can be read in this thread.
forums.macrumors.com

How exactly does FileVault work?

Can someone help me to better understand the technical details of how full-disk encryption (FDE) works with FileVault2 on a Mac? This is my layman's understanding... - You turn on FileVault. - macOS provides a Recovery Key. - macOS takes your login password and somehow creates an "encryption...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

For more info, see the links. They explain how the storage is structured, how the keys are managed, and how the blocks are encrypted. Fair warning: it's intended for those moderately familiar with cryptography.
 
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Bottom line is, is there a way to password protect these two external hard drives please?

thanks
 
bsamcash said:
Allow me to explain my misinformation. I have had many situations in which Windows will claim to password protect a drive or volume, but if it’s mounted on Linux or macOS, it’s entirely readable.

I apologize.
Click to expand...

Adding a Windows password to a hard-drive is NOT the same thing as *encrypting* a hard-drive.

That is why forensics people, and hackers, and nosey neighbors will boot from Linux and easily get into a Windows hard-drive - because any password protection is ONLY useful when booting up to Windows. (By booting to another OS, one can easily get around Windows' "security" on said hard-drive.)

Experts please correct me if I am wrong, but if the OP uses macOS to *encrypt* her external hard-drive, then AFAIK it should inaccessible to every OS without having the OP's password. Right?


OP: Just make sure you choose a LONG and SECURE password to protect your external HDD!
 
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Texas_Toast said:
Adding a Windows password to a hard-drive is NOT the same thing as *encrypting* a hard-drive.

That is why forensics people, and hackers, and nosey neighbors will boot from Linux and easily get into a Windows hard-drive - because any password protection is ONLY useful when booting up to Windows. (By booting to another OS, one can easily get around Windows' "security" on said hard-drive.)

Experts please correct me if I am wrong, but if the OP uses macOS to *encrypt* her external hard-drive, then AFAIK it should inaccessible to every OS without having the OP's password. Right?


OP: Just make sure you choose a LONG and SECURE password to protect your external HDD!
Click to expand...

Asked and answered in this thread. The contents of an encrypted drive, created on ANY platform, is absolutely, 100% inaccessible without the encryption key. Period.
 
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