Posted by Admin to Bitlocker for Mac on March 16th, 2017
How can I encrypt a USB flash drive in Windows 7/8/10 and have it readable on macOS 10.13 High Sierra/10.12 Sierra/Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan?
Mar 12, 2018 Want to format a hard drive for Mac and PC compatibility? You have to set it up correctly before getting starting. Mac OS Journaled is the formatting option for Mac and NTFS or MS-Doc is the. Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility. Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete any info you currently have on the drive.
Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues. TrueCrypt official site suggests users to migrate from TrueCrypt to Bitlocker, so up to now, Bitlocker is the best and secure way to encrypt data.
Although Microsoft only released Bitlocker for Windows, but with the help of M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac, Bitlocker drive encryption is compatible with macOS and encryting USB flash drive with Bitlocker drive encryption can be easily done.
How to encrypt USB flash drive with Bitlocker on Mac?
Step 1: Insert USB flash drive into Mac computer.
Step 2: Download, install and launch M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac.
Step 3: Click 'Encrypt' button in toolbar.
Step 4: Select the partition which you want to encrypt and click Encrypt.
Step 5: Enter the password.
Step 6: Save the recovery key.
Step 7: Complete Bitlocker drive encryption.
After encrypting USB flash drive with Bitlocker on Mac, we can use M3 Bitlocker Loader for Mac to open/access Bitlocker encrypted USB flash drive on macOS Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13/Sierra 10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7 Operating Systems.
Video tutorial:
How to encrypt USB flash drive with Bitlocker on Windows PC?
To enable BitLocker drive encryption on a USB flash drive, do the following:
Step 1: Insert a USB flash drive to a Windows computer where installed Windows 10 Professional/Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Professional/Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate/Enterprise, Windows Server 2008/2012, only these Windows editions support Bitlocker drive encryption. If you only have Windows 7/8/10 Home edition, please refer to: How to turn on Bitlocker drive encryption on Windows 7/8/10 Home edition?
Step 2: Format USB flash drive into FAT32/NTFS/exFAT file system. If there is data in USB flash drive, please go to step 3.
Step 3: Right click USB flash drive in My Computer or This PC and select 'Turn on Bitlocker'.
Step 4: On the 'Choose How You Want To Unlock This Drive' window, choose one or more for the following options, and then click Next:
'Use A Password To Unlock This Drive': Select this option if you want to be prompted for a password to unlock the drive. Passwords allow a drive to be unlocked in any location and to be shared with other people.
Format Flash Drive Windows 10
'Use My Smart Card To Unlock The Drive': Select this option if you want to use a smart card and enter the smart card PIN to unlock the drive. Because this feature requires a smart card reader, it is normally used to unlock a drive in the workplace and not for drives that might be used outside the workplace.
Step 5: On the 'How Do You Want To Store Your Recovery Key' window, click Save The Recovery Key To A File.
Step 6: In the 'Save BitLocker Recovery Key As' window, choose a storage location and then click Save.
Step 7: On the 'Are You Ready To Encrypt This Drive' window, click Start Encrypting. Do not remove the USB flash drive until the encryption process is complete. How long the encryption process takes depends on the size of the drive and other factors.
If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. Learn a few ways to make your drive Mac and PC friendly.
Need to access or transfer files between Mac and PC? As simple as this task sounds, it’s not very straightforward for inexperienced users. Since Mac OS X and Windows use totally different file systems, the way a drive is formatted can determine what type of computer it will work with. In fact, there are four ways you can format an external or USB flash drive to achieve varying degrees of compatibility between Macs and PCs. Let’s take a look at them:
HFS+
Mac OS X’s native file system is HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended), and it’s the only one that works with Time Machine. But while HFS+ is the best way to format drives for use on Macs, Windows does not support it. If you’re only going to be using your external or USB flash drive with certain PCs – such as at home or the office – you might be interested in a program called MacDrive. When you install MacDrive on a Windows PC, it will be able to seamlessly read & write to HFS+ drives. This isn’t a good solution if you need your drive to work on any PC without installing software, though.
NTFS
The native Windows file system is NTFS, which is only partially compatible with Mac OS X. Macs can read files on NTFS drives, but it cannot write to them. So if you need to get files from a PC to your Mac, NTFS is a decent option. However, you won’t be able to move files in the other direction, from Mac to PC.
FAT32
The most universally supported way to format your drive is with the FAT32 file system. It works with all versions of Mac OS X and Windows. Case closed, right? Well, not so fast. Unfortunately, FAT32 is a very old file system and has some technical limitations. For example, you cannot save files that are larger than 4GB on a FAT32-formatted drive. This is a deal-breaker if you work with huge files. The other limitation is the total size of the partition. If you format your FAT32 drive in Windows, the drive partition cannot be larger than 32GB. If you format it from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, the drive partition can be up to 2TB. Much better, except for that pesky 4GB limit.
exFAT
Mac Os Format Usb Drive
The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by today’s standards. Awesome, it’s perfect! Almost… since exFAT is fairly new, it isn’t compatible with older Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible. If you know you’ll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems, exFAT is the clear best choice.
Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac
Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.
Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive.
Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.
Format a drive using Windows
Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP).
Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu.
A window will pop up where you can choose the format – NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.