Protect Your USB Drives & Local Disks with BitLocker
BitLocker is pre-installed drive encryption software in Windows 7. BitLocker was first introduced in Vista but not as easy to setup like in Windows 7.
BitLocker allows you to encrypt a USB drive and restrict access with a password. Without the password, the USB drive is of no use. When you connect the USB drive to a Windows 7 computer, you are prompted for the password and upon entering password you access the drive as you normally would.
So lets get started, follow below steps to enable bitlocker on USB,
1. Insert your USB Drive
2. Navigate to All Programs->Control Panel->BitLocker Drive Encryption.
3.Click on "Turn on Bitlocker"
3.BitLocker will start to initialize to your USN flash drive.
4.After initialization process it will prompt to set up a password to unlock the drive. If you have smar card you can its PIN to unlock your USB drive.
5.After that it will ask to store a recovery key as shown below. You can use recovery key to unlock your drive in the event if you forgot your password.
6. After above step encrption process will start. Encrption process will take some time to complete the process. The time is depends on your disk size.
7. After encryption is complete. Your Removable drive icon changes to the icon associated with the encrypted drive.
8. Now whenever you enter your USB drive in to your USB it will ask you for password to unlock it.
