How to password protect a memory card

Many phones come with support for expandable storage and many laptops come with microSD card slots (though some include SD card slots as well). In both cases, adding a tiny microSD card is a great way to increase storage at minimal cost. The one issue is that these cards are relatively easy to steal.

Your best bet for keeping your data safe is to lock or encrypt these memory cards. This can be done on both Android and Windows using built-in tools.

Locking a memory card with an Android device

Insert your memory card into your phone. Once done, head to Settings, then Security, and scroll down till you see an option that reads ‘Encrypt SD card’. Select this option and enter a pin or password when prompted. This process will take a few minutes and your card will be encrypted.

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We’d recommend using a long password over a pin as pins tend to be small and easy to brute-force or guess. Passwords are more challenging.

Locking a memory card with Windows

Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 both have a built-in encryption tool called BitLocker that can be used to encrypt and lock a memory card. To do this, simply open File Explorer, right-click on the memory card, and then select ‘Turn on BitLocker’.

Follow the on-screen prompts to either set a password (recommended) or use a smart card (in an enterprise setting) to lock and unlock the memory card. 

There’s also an option to automatically unlock the memory card when connected to your laptop or PC, which is a convenient option to enable when you’re in a secure environment. When enabled, the memory card will function normally on your PC, but if someone steals it and tries to extract data from it, they’ll only be presented with gibberish data.

Sadly, most cameras don’t support encryption of any kind and so your photos can’t be protected by default.

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Both Windows and Android offer options to encrypt and thus lock your memory card. We recommend enabling this feature as it ensures data privacy and peace of mind when dealing with external storage options like microSD cards. When encrypted properly, the data on the cards is virtually impossible to steal.