Today many people could be carrying in their pocket a USB flash drive, which may have considerably small size and extremely large capacity, characteristic that has been adopted for a few years by different number of manufacturers.
If the information stored on this USB flash drive is of great importance, then perhaps you should consider protecting it with some kind of extra security; Most Windows operating systems have a native feature that can help you withifrar to this USB pendrive, Although, unfortunately, certain versions do not support this feature and technology, something that we will talk about below with the recommendation of about five alternatives that you can use, to be able to encrypt your device.
Windows native tool to encrypt a USB pendrive
As we mentioned at the top, there is a native tool proposed by Microsoft for versions of Windows seen onwards, which will help you to encrypt the USB pendrive without major problems or complications. All you have to do is open the file explorer in Windows and try to locate the drive letter of your USB pendrive, having to select it later with the right mouse button to activate that function from the context menu, obtaining something very similar to the capture that we will place at the bottom.
However, Windows XP users do not have the same luck, because they will not have the possibility to encrypt their USB pendrive; what they can do is read some of them with a tool which was proposed by Microsoft and you can download it from this link.
DiskCryptor
If you don’t want to use the native Microsoft tool then you could try using “DiskCryptor”, which is open source and allows you to have more additional options.
For example, in addition to the level of AES, Serpent and Twofish encryption that you can choose with this tool, the user also you can decide to encrypt a CD-ROM, DVD disc and of course, the USB pendrive; The tool requires a restart of the operating system and once the encryption is executed, it will take some time because the process will be carried out throughout the device; compatibility ranges from Windows 2000 to Windows 8.1 depending on the developer.
Rohos Mini Drive
with this alternative, the user will have to choose between either of the two modes to encrypt a USB pendrive, something that must be done depending on the level of experience they have in this type of work.
The first option creates container files within the same USB drive, while the other procedure suggests doing a partition that will act as a container, same that will be completely invisible to strange eyes. The convenience is great, since the first mode could be reviewed by an ordinary user with the file explorer, and thus eliminate those files since they are visible.
File Secure Free
The free nature of this tool called “File Secure Free” is conditional, since during the installation process a few screens will appear suggesting the user to install additional tools, which are considered as an «AdWare»; If you come across them, you should decline their installation to avoid having to delete them later.
The convenience of using this alternative is that the user will have the ability to encrypt only what they want, this means that you can choose only certain folders located on the USB stick, to encrypt them quickly.
USB Flash Security
Almost similar to the alternatives mentioned above, «USB Flash Security»Also creates a small container that will be used to encrypt the USB stick. It acts on a small space inside this unit, which does not exceed approximately 5 MB.
When the USB pendrive is inserted into the port of the personal computer, the files in this container act immediately making their content, inaccessible if you don't have the password to unlock it. Of course, this last alternative can have some drawbacks if an experienced user opens the "Windows Disk Manager" to see the partition and thus delete it with a single click.