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Need to save and encrypt spreadsheets to a USB stick on Mac

I have to encrypt and store spreadsheets on a USB drive. It has been more difficult than I would have imagined to discover this solution on the web. Private Access is the encryption program that came with the Sandisk stick. Tests have far too often shown it to be Private No Access. Could someone suggest any program that encrypts data to a USB stick? It may be free or paid for. I am unsure if FileVault may be used on a stick, but Mac not booting from it. Knowing which file format would work best on the stick would be helpful because the data will only ever be accessible on an iMac. Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated. P.S. I'm using the most recent version of Monterey.

Best Answered by

Amanda Wong

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

With or without third-party software, you can encrypt a USB drive on your Mac.

You can't use the FileVault to encrypt a non-startup disk on Mac by default unless the USD drive is bootable, you can enable FileVault on it to encrypt the whole drive including your spreadsheets.

You can also encrypt the USB drive with a macOS-compatible file system in Finder, and it will automatically convert the file system to APFS. Encrypting the drive with FileVault and using Finder will not lose any data.

To encrypt a drive on Mac, you can also use Disk Utility when it is formatted with NTFS, or if you want to format the USB drive, you need to select the drive from Disk Utility's sidebar and choose Erase.

There is a more recommended method to encrypt internal and external drives on Mac without limitations, that is using iBoysoft DiskGeeker, an all-in-one disk management tool for Mac. It enables you to encrypt the NTFS drive with BitLocker on Mac, and encrypt non-system volume with FileVault.

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iBoysoft DiskGeeker

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