We all have some sensitive data on our computer and to protect them we can encrypt them using software’s, there are many free and paid apps which can do this work for you. But why you have to install any software if you can do this job by in-built feature of Windows.
If you are using Ultimate Or Enterprise edition of Windows 7 or Windows Vista and Pro or Enterprise edition of Windows 8. It will allow you to encrypt your whole data in your Hard drive or even in USB. So let see how can we do it.
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Right click on drive which data you wanna encrypt and select Turn On BitLocker,
- Once you click on it, a dialog box will come up which will ask you how to unlock drive, If you are on Windows 8 then you will see 2 options to unlock, either use Password or Use your Smart Card to unlock it, But if you are on Windows 7 then you will see another option which says Unlock drive Automatically on This Computer.
- Select the best option and on next screen it will ask you to save your Recovery Key, it is useful if you lost your password or smart card.You can either save it to a file on your computer or print it, If you are using Windows 7 then it will allow you to save key on USB and on Windows 8 it allows you to save key on your Microsoft Account.
- We had printed key to show you how it will look like :-
- On now you will be asked to Start Encrypting, click on it
- It might take some time to encrypt your data, don’t interrupt the process as it might harm your data
- At last it will finish encrypting your data
Overall it’s a nice option as you can encrypt and protect your data without using any extra software or app.
