How to unlock encrypted external hard drive mac
How to Encrypt and Password Protect an External Hard Drive using Mac OS High Sierra
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hello hello Jordan here and today I'm
gonna be showing you how to encrypt and
password protect an external hard drive
that you have using Mac OS hi Sierra now
before you get going
there are different ways to do this lots
of third-party software some that even
comes on Western Digital hard drives
personally though I'm a fan of just
using the built-in tools that come with
Apple computers and I've also had some
issue using Western Digital password
protection in the past I just think the
built-in tools that come with Apple's
computers are more seamless so that's
what we're going to be using going to be
using a utility that you have on your
computer called Disk Utility so you
spotlight to find it Disk Utility hit
enter and then go up to the top it's
like view show all devices so this
actually shows the like the actual hard
drive before what it was showing was
actually volumes or partitions of the
hard drive but you don't really need to
to worry about that so select the hard
drive not the volume and then the
process for encrypting a drive you
actually have to erase the whole drive
and reformat it so that it the whole
drive is encrypted and password
protected so when you have the actual
hard drive selected then click earase
then type in a name gonna call it master
8 terabyte now the format this is gonna
get really intimidating when I opened
this up I was like what the heck am I
supposed to select so I'm gonna walk you
through you know which one to select so
you can ignore the bottom two because
those don't have encryption options so
we're left with 1 2 3 4 ok a little bit
better but so which one so if your hard
drive is a solid-state drive you will
want to choose probably one of the top 4
choices however Apple file system is
what ap FS is short for that only works
for mac OS hi Sierra and future versions
of Mac OS so if you format it with Apple
file system it will be speedier quicker
optimized it's it's a better form file
system for solid-state hard drives
however if you plug it into a Mac
running let's say mountain lion it
wouldn't be able to read the information
on it so that's kind of a personal
choice that you need to make on you know
what you're gonna be using your drive
for so let's say you don't have a solid
state hard drive or you want it you know
to any Mac to be able to connect and
read data on the drive
you'll go with Mac OS extended fun fact
what journaled means is it simply has a
feature that like journals like
journaling and notebook
takes down information about what you're
doing with the drive and can help
prevent data loss
so that's on every single one so it's
not an option but just fun fact so we'll
select encrypted we're not gonna do case
sensitive so what case-sensitive means
is that those two file names on screen
would be considered different files on a
case sensitive drive now most tribes are
not case-sensitive so when transferring
data from a case sensitive drive to a
non case sensitive drive
it's very likely that one file could
overwrite another file and result in
data loss so in general good rule of
thumb unless you really need it for some
reason to stay away from case sensitive
drives so the option we're gonna choose
because I don't have a solid-state drive
and I wanted to you know be able to be
read by earlier versions of Mac OS we're
gonna do Mac OS extended journaled
encrypted and then you will type in a
password and hit choose ok and now we
get to scheme so open up and if you see
these three options you're like what
that I don't know what to do
just choose good partition map and move
on but I want to explain kind of what
these are what they're for
in short doesn't really matter what you
choose if you're just going to be using
this as an external hard drive to back
up data on I'd still recommend going
with good partition map though what
these are really important for is if
you're using an external drive as a boot
drive for your computer you'll want to
use good partition map for if your
computer is an Intel based chip computer
if your computers that PowerPC you'll
use Apple partition map and then Windows
Linux you'd use a Master Boot Record
anyways we're just using the straub to
backup data
- now security options what is this this
is actually how many times Disk Utility
will erase the drive so fastest through
most secure this is one erase to erase
erase and this is seven erases
I'm just trying to reformat the drive so
it's encrypted so it doesn't really
matter some shouldn't do fastest and
then you select a race now wow it goes
through that I'll show the details you
can see the progress if I had selected
the volume instead of the actual hard
drive and hit a race I may have gotten
an error and it would say media kit
reports not enough space on device for
requested operation and first take when
I was doing this video that's what I got
it seems like an error with Mac OS
Sierra and High Sierra that it's doing
that not entirely sure why it's not able
to you know encrypt the whole Drive when
it the volume is selected not the hard
drive but the way around that that error
is by selecting the drive like I did and
then as you see it's successful so just
wanted to touch on that because there's
probably a lot of people that get that
error and don't really know what to do
and there's some kind of convoluted
answers out there and not quite easy is
just selecting the hard drive so anyways
hit done and boom the hard drive is now
encrypted so I'm gonna inject it here
and plug it back in and show you what
it's like so I just plugged in the
external hard drive and it's in the
process of mounting and yes now it pops
up this little window for me to enter
the password I type in my password hit
on lock it on encrypts the hard drive
and then mounts it on my desktop right
there so that is how you encrypt a hard
drive using Mac OS hi Sierra
hope you learned a little bit more about
hard drive partitioning all that good
jazz
thanks so much Russian and have a great
day
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