How to use Bitlocker to encrypt data in computers

BitLocker is a security feature built into the Windows operating system, with this feature we can encrypt all data on the hard drive to a memory device such as USB. All your data will be safely protected by password and encryption according to its own standards. The following article of TipsMake.com will guide you all the steps to encrypt data on your computer as well as on USB with BitLocker, please follow along.

1. Encrypt the system drive (Windows installation drive) with Bitlocker

Step 1: Right-click on drive C (drive install window) and select Turn on BitLocker

If you get an error message like the one below, your computer doesn't have a TPM security chip installed, so you can't use BitLocker. However, we can still fix this error simply, you can refer to this article to enable Bitlocker on computers that do not support TPM .

Step 2: If your computer does not encounter the above error or after fixing the error, after Turn on BitLocker will have the window as shown below appears:

You press Enter a password

Step 3: You enter the password protection in 2 blank boxes then click Next

Step 4: Here we will proceed to create a password backup file to be able to recover the BitLocker password in case you forget the password, for example.

There are many methods to save Backup files, you can save to Microsoft account, save to USB, save as txt file or print to paper.

Here we will choose Save to a file (save as a txt file)

The file browse window appears, select where to store the backup file and click Save, note that you cannot save to the drive you are encrypting. For example, if you encrypt the C drive, you must save the backup file to the D drive or USB.

Return to the previous window, click Next to continue.

Step 5: Here we have 2 encoding options:

1. Encrypt used disk space only (Encrypt used data only)
2. (Encrypt the entire hard drive)

If your computer is new and no data, you can choose Encrypt used disk space only for fast encryption otherwise you can choose to encrypt the entire hard drive, but it will take a little longer

Step 6 : If you use Windows 10 from version 1511 or later, this option will be added, this is a better new encoding, but only on Windows 10 version 1511 and later. However, if you choose this type of encryption, computers using the old operating system will not be able to decode it if you copy the data to.

So if you want to choose a new encryption type, select New encryption mode , otherwise select Compatible mode then click Next .

Step 7 : Click Continue to continue.

Notification requires restarting the computer, click Restart now to restart immediately

During booting the computer, you will have to enter the password created in step 3:

When booting into windows, you will see on C drive there is a padlock symbol which is encrypted with BitLocker:

2. Encrypt data on non-system drive

In the above section, TipsMake.com showed you how to encrypt data on the hard drive containing the operating system, in this part we will encrypt data on the normal hard drive partition, not the operating system drive.

In essence, the way is similar when we encrypt the operating system drive.

First, right-click on the drive that needs encryption and select Turn on Bitlocker

For non-OS hard drives we can optionally encrypt with smart cards, but here we still use that option is encrypted with a password. You enter the password then click Next .

The next steps you do the same as in part 1 then wait for the encoding process to take place:

After successfully encrypting your data drive, there will be a padlock icon as shown below:

In addition to encrypting the data drive in your computer, you can also encrypt USB data with BitLocker easily. You can refer to the instruction on how to encrypt data in USB with BitLocker here:

3. How to turn off BitLocker encryption in windows

Step 1: To turn off BitLocker encryption you must first unlock that data drive, right-click on the data drive and select Manage BitLocker.

Step 2 : A new window appears, click Turn off BitLocker

The message will appear and click Turn off BitLocker again.

4. How to recover a Bitlocker password using the Recovery Key file

As you know, when we encrypt data with Bitlocker there will be a step to create a password backup file to use in case you forget the password can not access encrypted data. So if you are in this case, here is how we can recover the Bitlocker password.

Step 1 : When you open the locked data drive, a dialog box will appear to enter the unlock password, where we forgot the password, so select More options and then select Enter recovery key

A new dialog box appears, this is the dialog box where we enter the Recovery Key in the Backup file we created during the data encryption:

Step 2: Open the backup file, this file has a sequence of 48 digits, please copy this number:

Paste the Recovery Key number sequence into the dialog box and click Unlock

After opening, a few options will appear, you can turn off this window or click Open folder to view files to open the unlocked data drive.

Thus the data drive has been unlocked and you can open it normally to view the data, if you want you can turn off Bitlocker and perform encryption again.

5. Compare the read and write speed of the hard drive before and after encrypting data with Bitlocker

You may not know, after encrypting the hard drive data with Bitlocker, the read and write speed of the hard drive will be reduced because the data when copied will have to go through the encryption process.

And to know how much speed is reduced, TipsMake.com has done a test comparing the speed of the hard drive first, after being encrypted with BitLocker, follow the image below:

- Read and write speed of SSD before and after encryption with BitLocker:

Before:

After:

- Read and write speed of HDD before and after encoding with BitLocker:

Before:

After:

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