Upgraded your PC to Windows 10 and want to encrypt your drive? Great, you can use a 3rd party tool or use BitLocker. Although Microsoft controls BitLocker and the tool itself is not open source, it is included with all versions of Windows 10 (except Home) and is free to use. It’s a pretty good tool, but not one that can be recommended wholeheartedly.
Protect yourself by encrypting your data from the internet | shutter
If you still want to use it, here’s how you can do it.
Trusted Platform Module Error
Like me, if you upgraded your PC from Windows 7 (or 8) while never using an encrypted drive, there could be a problem. A common error that most users report is an error that says: “A compatible Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security device must be present on this computer, but TPM was not found.” Now, to dive into TPM would be beyond the scope of this post, but the simplest workaround is highlighted below.
Disable TPM to continue
For the curious, TPM is an encryption processor used to secure hardware, including drives. Disabling it here is only necessary when your system gives the aforementioned errors as not all systems have TPM. So here are the steps to skip it.
Steps:
One. Sign in to your Windows 10 computer with an account with administrative rights.
b. Assuming that the computer is already configured to show the classic start menu, click Start, and at the bottom of the menu in the search box, type GPEDIT.MSC command and press enter key.
c. On the Local Group Policy Editor snap-in opened from the left pane expand Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Bit Locker Drive Encryption and from the expanded list, click to select OS device.
d. From the right pane, double-click “Require additional authentication” at startup.
D. On the opened box, click to select Enabled radio button and make sure that under Options Enable Bit Locker without compatible TPM checkbox is selected.
f. Once done, click ALRIGHT to allow the changes to take effect and close the Local Group Policy Editor snap-in.
Once these are done, you should now be able to proceed with encrypting your drive using BitLocker. Now let’s do that.
Use BitLocker in Windows 10
Not much has changed in Windows 10 as far as setting up BitLocker encryption is concerned. All you need to do is right click on the drive and select Enable BitLocker and follow the steps.
For my encryption key, I chose to store the key in a USB drive. You can choose the option that you feel most secure.
Once you have completed all the steps, there will be a pop-up in the taskbar stating that you need to restart your computer for the encryption to complete.
Once you’ve rebooted, the encryption will begin and you can click the taskbar icon to see the progress. Depending on your system and the type of drive (SSD/HDD), this can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. So be patient.
Please note: While you can eject the USB drive after saving the key, I recommend keeping it on until the encryption is complete. Just to be on the safer side.
Once the process is complete, you will receive a final notification.
To cross check, open My computer screen and notice if there is a locked icon on the drive that you have selected for encryption.
Then you can manage more encryption options from
Control Panel > System and Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Encrypt a lot?
We want to know if you have data encrypted on your Windows machine. Send us your queries if you have any, in our forum.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
