Protect Portable Storage With BitLocker in Windows 8

Introduction

 
Windows 8 offers the best way to protect portable storage devices like USB connected drives and hard drives which does not exist in Windows prior to Vista. Microsoft offers BitLocker based on full disk encryption technologies.
 
Note
 
In Windows 8, BitLocker and BitLocker To Go require Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise.
 
Both BitLocker and BitLocker To Go provide a full disk encryption facility, unlike the other older Microsoft encryption features. It is applied at the file or folder level. But now Windows 8 provides it in a slightly different feature present in the Control Panel called BitLocker Drive Encryption.
 
To apply the BitLocker feature from the Control Panel  do the following steps.
 
Step 1
 
Open the start screen in Windows 8; see.
 
start-screen-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 2
 
Enter Control Panel into the search box.
 
search-option-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 3
 
The All control panel items window opens where you select the BitLocker Drive encryption option.
 
Bitlocker-drive-encryptiion-option.jpg
 
Step 4
 
Select the turn on BitLocker option of the D Drive within the BitLocker Drive encryption window.
 
turn-on-bitlocker-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 5
 
Checked the use a password to unlock the Drive. And enter the password.
 
password-to-unlock-option-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 6
 
Click on the save to a file option. For this you can save a recovery key as a file in your system.
 
save-as-a-file-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 7
 
Go to the location where you want to save the key as a file.
 
file-save-loction-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 8
 
Check the Encrypt used disk space only (faster and best for new PC's and drives) option.
 
encryption-option-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 9
 
Click on the Start encryptng button. For starting the encryption of drive D:
 
start-encryption-button-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 10
 
Then you will see the Encryption process.
 
encryption-process-in-windows8.jpg
 
Step 11
 
Finally the Encryption process completes successfully.
 
 complete-encryption-in-windows8.jpg
 

Summary 

 
In this article, we learned about Protect Portable Storage With BitLocker in Windows 8.  


Similar Articles