Password protecting a Thumb Drive
I am trying to password protect a thumb drive and am trying to use the Disk Utility as Apple suggests: The instructions are below but when I try it only gets me to the erase at 5.
- If the device contains any files you want to save, copy them to another storage device or volume.
- In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
- If Disk Utility isn’t open, click the Launchpad icon in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the Search field, then click the Disk Utility icon .
- In the sidebar, select the storage device you want to encrypt.
- Click the Erase button in the toolbar.
- Enter a name for the volume.
- Click the Scheme pop-up menu, then choose GUID Partition Map.
- Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose an encrypted file system format.
- Enter and verify a password, then click Choose.
- To change the password later, select the volume in the sidebar, then choose File > Change Password.
- (Optional) If available, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, then click OK.
- Secure erase options are available only for some types of storage devices. If the Security Options button is not available, you can’t use Disk Utility to perform a secure erase on the storage device.
- Click Erase, then click Done
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 14.6