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Does Encrypting a Flash Drive with Disk Utility Protect My Data on All Operating Systems?

Hi there, I'm new to the community so I apologise if this question is in the wrong place.


I'm looking to place some information on a flash drive as, whilst safe, I know uploading documents to the cloud comes with its risks.


My concern is, if in the event I lose or have my flash drive stolen, suppose I followed the instructions offered by Apple on how to encrypt my flash drive with Disk Utility, would I be protected regardless of the operating system used by the person who attempts to read the data off of my flash drive?


I understand that the encryption used is OS exclusive and so if I encrypt on a Mac I can't decrypt the contents onto a Windows device unless I had the relevant software in place (sorry I'm not too tech savvy), and the same would apply if I encrypted using Windows BitLocker and tried to decrypt on Mac.


But as the decryption procedure doesn't work as planned on an alternative operating system, does that also mean the encryption will be compromised?


In short, if I encrypt on a Mac and someone puts my flash drive into a device with an alternative OS that the encryption was not designed to function on, would the encryption hold?


Thanks.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Aug 6, 2021 3:35 PM

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2 replies

Aug 7, 2021 4:37 PM in response to hashimtmahmood

Don't use a USB stick for storing backup copies of your files (or the only copy of a file). The quality of USB sticks is extremely poor.


Encrypted data is only as secure as the password used to encrypt that data.


If you need to share the drive with other operating systems, then you can use VeraCrypt to encrypt an external drive. You can also encrypt files/folders using GPG which has apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Does Encrypting a Flash Drive with Disk Utility Protect My Data on All Operating Systems?

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