Encrypt Your Data on Your Hard Drive or USB Stick
Freeware, Windows Vista Guides, Windows XP Guides Add comments
Do you have data on your USB drive that could be accessed by someone if they found your key drive? Do you have sensitive data that you need to protect, but don’t want to pay for expensive software?
This is your solution and it can all be done for free. Don’t have a USB drive? They are inexpensive these days, so go get yourself one. You can still follow this guide - bookmark it and come back to it.
This guide is shown using Windows Vista; however, you can do this with Windows XP, Mac OS X, or Linux.
Page 1: Getting Started
Page 2: Encrypt part of your USB drive
Page 3: Test to see if it Worked
First, lets get a copy of TrueCrypt
You can get the Windows copy that is used for this guide here. (If you download this copy, please skip to the next page.)
Or you can get the newest copy from the website. Choose which version you want (Windows, OS X, or Linux.)
Once downloaded, run the installer. When prompted, select Extract and click Next.
Extract the files to your USB key drive in a folder named TrueCrypt.
You can delete some files in the directory if you wish. Ensure you keep the following four files.
What Next?

![]() |
Get Free Windows Books Get free books and software from Windows Guides |
10 Responses to Encrypt Your Data on Your Hard Drive or USB Stick
Shawn B
I would like to come here again. It sounds god to me, and there’s a lot of interesting information here
JT
Man I really need to do this, thanks for the guide.
Willis
I’ve used this for a long time and I love it!
Charity
Cool now i dont have to worry about losing my data to someone who finds my stick if i lose it
dev
this is the site that im been looking for such a long time. a lot of windows helps and tuts.
jd
is the process of encrypting an external hdd the same as the usb process? If I take my usb drive to a different pc/mobile will I be able to access my usb drive on the different pc/mobile?
thanks
Rich
jd - yes it’s the same process. You will need truecrpyt on the computer you are using the drive on. You can encrypt just part of the drive if you’d like to use the drive on other computers still
Trackbacks (Trackback URL)