If you see “Decrypt ” in black text, you’re ready to go! You can tell that it’s finished by right-clicking on that same icon. This process can take hours depending on the size of the drive you’re encrypting, so go get some coffee or take a nap while you let it do its thing. However, in my testing, that contextual menu sometimes shows spurious messages. You can right-click on the drive’s icon at any point to see if it’s still encrypting: Unfortunately, there is no progress bar to tell you how far along you are, which is kind of a huge oversight on Apple’s part. Or store it in your password-management program, which would probably be safer and more sanitary.Īnyway, after you’ve typed in that info, click “Encrypt Disk,” and the process should begin. Write the password down on a sticky note and shove it in your underpants if you need to. Of course, here comes the Big Bad Scary Caveat™- don’t forget this password, or you’ll lose access to the data on the drive. Whatever method you choose, the next step will be creating the drive’s password and coming up with a hint for it.

…or you can right-click on the drive’s icon in Finder’s sidebar and encrypt it from there. If you don’t see that icon, you can either go to Finder> Preferences> General and turn on showing external disks on your Desktop… So to get started, right- or Control-click on the drive’s icon on your Desktop and pick “Encrypt. However, even though this first method theoretically shouldn’t erase any data on the drive, be sure you have a backup before you begin just in case things go all nutty on you.

If you’re running Mountain Lion or Mavericks, this process is really, really easy. So let’s discuss how you can keep things secure under various recent versions of the Mac’s operating system. After all, it’s a bummer to lose a piece of equipment or have it stolen, but what’d take that from “bummer” to “nightmare” is knowing that someone may have access to, say, your private financial information. Do you use an external drive or a flash drive to store some of your data? Then you might consider encrypting it.

Macos encrypt external drive