Securing your USB with BitLocker To Go

A lot of PC users are still using Windows XP and Windows Vista, this article might change your mind and upgrade to Windows 7. 

BitLocker was already introduced during the reign Windows Vista for encrypting your hard drive.  When Windows 7 came, BitLocker To Go was added which allows us to encrypt USB flash drives.  A nice innovation since flash drives are essentials to us PC users.  This application will make your data more secure, protecting your precious and confidential documents in the wrong hands.

To encrypt your USB flash drive, open My Computer and right-click on the flash drive that you want to be encrypted and select Turn on BitLocker

You will be asked to key in your password for you to unlock the drive.

You will then be asked to to store a recovery key just in case you will lose or forgot your password.  Be advised that if you select to save it as a file don’t store it in the save flash drive that you are encrypting.  You will be seeing a confirmation that your key has been saved or a printed should you prefer to print your recovery key.

Click on the Start Encrypting button to encrypt your flash drive.

You will see a progress bar to see the status of your drive encryption.  After encryption you will be prompted that the encryption is complete.  You will also notice that the icon of your flash drive will change showing that it is encrypted with BitLocker.

And you’re done!  Your drive is now encrypted and secured!  Now every time you’ll access your flash drive you’ll be prompted to key in your password.  Notice also that the color of your drive’s icon will change depending on the status of your drive.  Gold color indicates that your drive is locked and gray indicates that your drive is unlocked.

Your Encrypted dive can also be used and opened in Windows Vista and XP but unfortunately you can only copy and read files on those platform,  You will need a Windows 7 platform should you need to add or modify a file.

Before I forgot, this feature is only available to Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions.