Disk Utility

All of the below steps were followed wit skips are parts ? Notation is Step 2 in Bold

1. If you’re protecting an external volume, make sure it’s connected to your computer.
2. Choose View > Show All Devices.
3. Select the volume you want to encrypt in the sidebar and note the volume’s file format (either APFS or Mac OS Extended). Then click the Erase button .
4. Enter a name for the volume.
5. Click the Format pop-up menu and choose either APFS (Encrypted) or Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).
6. Enter a password when prompted.
7. If you chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted), to prevent the erased files from being recovered, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, then click OK.
8. Writing over the data three times meets the U.S. Department of Energy standard for securely erasing magnetic media. Writing over the data seven times meets the U.S. Department of Defense 5220-22-M standard.
9. Click Erase.

Encrypt and protect a disk with a password