You’ll need to type the password to unlock it. Right-click the drive and choose Unlock Drive…:
In the File Explorer, encrypted drives are displayed with a yellow lock icon. You can still use your drive while BitLocker is encrypting it, but until it has finished its job always remember to hit the Pause button before unplugging the drive, to avoid damaging your data: This recovery key is the only safeguard if you ever should forget your password, store it somewhere safe.ĭepending on its type (SSD are much faster than hard drives or flash drives), its size, and the volume of data it contains the encryption can take a long time. Right-click on the drive or thumb drive you want to encrypt and choose Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions.ĭefine a password and decide where to save the recovery key. See the other solution I suggest at the end. It’s easy to use, but it’s not the most secure.
Also, BitLocker is available for Windows Pro or higher only, not for Windows Home users. Unlike Disk Utility, it can’t encrypt individual folders. Like Disk Utility, BitLocker uses strong encryption to encrypt internal or external drives, including thumb drives and so on. To encrypt a drive, or to make an encrypted image of a folder, using strong encryption, Mac users have Disk Utility.
