Want to stop prying eyes from snooping into the content of your external drive?
Or in the event of the loss of your flash drive (a very probable eventuality), you want to be assured that the information contained in it remains secured. Information that can be taken advantage of or used against you.
Then secure it Bitlocker. This feature has been bundled with Windows OS since Windows Vista. Though you will need the Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise versions of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10 to activate bitlocker on your drive, you can however view the contents of the drive, if you have the password, on any PC with OS as old as Windows XP installed.
HOW TO ACTIVATE BITLOCKER ON YOUR DRIVE
- Insert the drive into your PC
- Identify the icon for the inserted drive and right click on it.
- Select “Turn Bitlocker On”
- Bitlocker initialises the drive. Takes a few seconds.
- A screen pops up asking you to CHOOSE HOW YOU WANT TO UNLOCK THE DRIVE
- Select the option to USE A PASSWORD TO UNLOCK THE DRIVE
Depending on the size of the drive and the amount of data contained in it, the encryption process may take a very long while. Best carried out on an empty drive, could take as little as less than a minute to complete.
* DO NOT INTERRUPT THE ENCRYPTION PROCESS*
After this procedure, the drive prompts you for a password any time the secured drive is inserted into any PC. However, there is an option to have the drive not request for password for trusted PCs.
This is a very simple procedure. However, you may find the video clip below helpful