Of course, you can make the disk image any size you want – as long as it is smaller than the drive’s maximum capacity. To take advantage of all your USB drive’s storage space, enter a custom size that is slightly smaller than its full capacity. Re-type your file name in the Name field.Choose your USB flash drive from the Where drop-down menu.

In the window that comes up, enter a file name next to Save As.Once the drive has finished reformatting, go to File > New > Blank Disk Image in the menu bar.Make sure you’ve made a copy of important documents before doing this. Please note this will permanently delete any data on the drive. Click the Erase button towards the bottom.Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from the Format menu and type something of your choice in the Name field.Select it and then click on the Erase tab. Find your USB flash drive in the list of devices on the left.Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).Then copy and paste them back to the flash drive once the following steps are completed. If there are, temporarily copy and paste them all in a folder on your Desktop. This tutorial assumes there are not currently any files on the drive. The first step is to attach a USB flash drive to your Mac.The actual work that needs to be done by you will only take a couple minutes. Don’t be frightened by the number of steps listed below – I chose to be overly thorough in some of my explanations to avoid confusion. Everything inside the disk image is accessible only to users who know the password that unlocks it. It involves creating an encrypted disk image, which is basically a storage container for your files. If you only use your USB flash drive on Macs and not Windows-based PCs, there is a very easy way to password protect your data. How foolish! Let’s find out how to lock down the files on these drives to keep them from prying eyes. And yet we walk around with them all day risking that they might somehow fall into the wrong hands. Some of us keep very important and sensitive information on our USB flash drives. What if it got lost or stolen and somebody suddenly had access to all of your personal files? Password protect your flash drive to avoid taking that chance.

We all carry around USB flash drives in our pockets or on our keychains.

Encrypt thumb drive mac