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There are both paid and free software for OSX and WIndows, this guide will focus mainly on OSX 10.8 6 and above and Windows 7 and above.
Note: Drive encryption may require you to format your drive.
OSX 10.
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6 and above
1.OSX 10.8 Disk Encryption (free)
OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) provides an easy and very simple way for users to encrypt their external drives.
To encrypt a drive on OSX Mountain Lion, simply right click the drive, either in the finder window or on your desktop.
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In versions 10.6 and 10.7 drive encryption should be accessible in the Disk Utility which can be found in your Applications/Utilities Folder. This drive encryption will ask you to erase your drive.
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From here select the Encrypt option.
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Type in your password and hint and press Encrypt Disk
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Note: If you run into this error, follow use this quick fix . However, doing so to correct it. This WILL erase your hard drive. Select your drive and click on the partition tab
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Click options to select "GUID Partition Table" and click apply. |
When you press Encrypt Disk you will not see a progress bar or any sort of indication that the encryption process has begun. However, it is important that you DO NOT remove your drive until the process has finished. Depending on your drive, it may take a span of 3 minutes to 1 hour to encrypt the drive, the larger the drive the longer the wait. Be patient!
To check whether your drive has been encrypted or not, simply right click on the drive in your finder or your desktop and press Get Info.
You will see that under the drive description it now says Encrypted.
Now if you remove your drive and re-insert it, OSX will ask for a password.
2.BitLocker (free)