My Disk Utility doesn't have encryption option.

Hi,

Your sidebar is curently showing volumes instead of devices.

1. Select view > show all devices (or use the view icon or press ⌘2) .

2. Now you can select the drive as a device instead of a volume.

3. With a device (not the underlying volume) selected click on the 'Erase' button.

4. Choose 'GUID Partition Map' from the 'Scheme' combo-box.

5. Finally choose one of the encrypted file formats from the 'Format' combo-box.

6. Go go go

Ok here is the deal, after searching for a long time and getting nowhere this is what you have to do. Over on the left side in Disk Utility make sure you are on the external selection (or whichever you need to be). Select the top selection that has the drop down arrow beside of it and NOT what is off set just below it. Then go to erase button and click it. Before you do anything else go down to "SCHEME" and select GUID Partition Map. Once you have made that selection go back up to format and when you open it back up what the Encryption option will be there. I will include some pictures. Good luck this was not a hard one but very aggravating to find the answer. Hope this helps someone

The first picture shows the wrong selection and the second shows the correct selections

Ziatron: I recently upgraded to El Capitan, and I just ran into the same issue with a Verbatim 16gb 'STORE N GO' USB drive, which I wanted to encrypt. The Disk Utility gui showed no partion on drive, and there was no partitioning option available in the gui (partition button was greyed out). So I erased it using the gui; and formatted it as OS X Extended (Journaled). There was no option to erase it and reformat it as OS X Extended (Journaled) Encrypted. After the USB drive was erased, no partition was shown in the gui. I checked the USB drive using the diskutil 'list' command, and it showed no partitioning. So I then erased the USB drive using the diskutil 'eraseDrive' command, formatting it as JHFS+. I checked the USB drive with diskutil, and it showed that it had been partitioned. Then I checked it with the gui, for ha-ha's, and found that the USB drive still did not show any partitioning. I was able to encrypt the drive by selecting it in a Finder window, and right-clicking on it. Finder did not show a partition to encrypt. I selected the drive itself.

To summarize:

1) Erase the USB with the Disk Utility gui, setting the format as OS X Journaled.

2) Erase the USB using the diskutil 'eraseDisk' command.

i.e., diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ STORENGO disk3

3) Select the whole disk in a Finder window, right click on it, and then select 'encrypt'.

It may be possible to combine steps 1 & 2 into 1 step, by only issuing the diskutil command. However, I did not have the opportunity to test that.

Hello JimInNVusa,

I have the exact same issue! However, I do have the correct USB selected and the options do not appear on mine. Please help! Thank you!

You must format the drive with a GUID Partition Table.

You can do that if you Erase the drive with Disk Utility. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) as the format.

If you are trying to encrypt the drive without erasing the contents, it cannot be done since it is not already formatted with a GUID Partition Table.

There is no encryption option in Disk Utility anymore. Format your drive GPT and start encryption in Finder.

No, it's still there.

Perhaps you need to first get it into GPT beforehand. As you can see above, it is possible to encrypt from Disk Utility.

EDIT:

I found a spare Flash drive to test on and you do need to get it into OS X Extended with GPT before you can encrypt.

You could likely do it all in one step in Terminal with diskutil, but it doesn't appear that is possible in Disk Utility.

JimInNVusa wrote:

Experienced users must get tired of us novices after a while.

A storage device divides into individual partitions,

which are listed as separate volumes under the Devices section in the Finder sidebar or in Disk Utility.

I'm having the exact same problem as the original poster. However in my disk utilities I am ONLY showing the USB flash drive in the sidebar with NO partitions shown, Just the drive only. None of the drop down choices include ...."Encrypted"

Under "Scheme" I used "GUID Partition Map". How can I encrypt my USB flash drive?

I tried to encrypt by using the Finder, and I get the following message. "A partition, not a whole disk, is required for this operation."

Using OS 10.11.6 on a Mac Pro tower.

However in my disk utilities I am ONLY showing the USB flash drive in the sidebar with NO partitions shown, Just the drive only. None of the drop down choices include ...."Encrypted"

If you only see the drive listed, it is in MBR (DOS) format. You must first format it OS X Extended with GUID.

You can then try again, and should have the options to encrypt.

If you only see the drive listed, it is in MBR (DOS) format. You must first format it OS X Extended with GUID.

You can then try again, and should have the options to encrypt.

I did the above several times before I posted. When I do a, "get info"on this drive it shows it to be OS X Extended (Journaled). I did use GUID. ONLY the the drive listed.

Other suggestions appreciated.

You have to format it once (to GPT) first, then when you hit erase again the option will be available