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How does BitLocker To Go work on USB drive in Windows 7?

January 15, 2010

This should be quite easy for anyone to understand, and Microsoft intended it to be that way. Safety and simplicity do not always work well, but BitLocker To Go in Windows 7 manages it rather well.

So, how does it work in Windows 7 now that the USB drive has BitLocker To Go installed? Well, let’s see.

• Of course, the first thing you must do is connect the USB drive to your Windows 7 PC.
• When you do, you will see a password prompt. An interesting note here is the “Show password characters as I type them,” which allows you to remove the asterisk obfuscation while entering your password.
• If you wish to save your password to make it quicker to access the USB drive when it is attached to your PC, simply click “Automatically unlock on this computer from now on.” Your password will be cached by your Windows 7 system.
• The Windows 7 AutoPlay dialog window will now launch and let you choose how you would like to open the USB drive.

With Windows XP and Windows Vista, this process is a little different than the way Windows 7 handles it – at least the first time you connect your BitLocker To Go encrypted USB drive.

• Connect the encrypted USB drive to your Windows XP/Vista PC and you will be presented with an AutoPlay window which will prompt you to install the BitLocker To Go software on your XP/Vista PC.
• Install the BitLocker To Go software.
• The BitLocker To Go password prompt will appear. Note that the “Automatically unlock…” is not present; it is not supported on XP/Vista.
• Another difference is most certainly the BitLocker To Go Explorer window – it looks like Windows Explorer, but it does not work like it. You simply have to copy files off of the encrypted USB drive and onto the local machine (or to a networked drive) and run them from there.
• And, we have another prohibition with XP/Vista that you do not have with Windows 7 – you cannot save files to the BitLocker To Go encrypted USB drive. This operation is not allowed, period.

There you have it. That is what you need to know about BitLocker To Go. In these documents, the procedure has been drawn out to explore each and every part of the Windows 7 drive encryption application. Once you have finished reading and you actually install BitLocker To Go, you will probably find that learning about it took longer than actually using it on your USB drive. Windows 7 allows you to secure your data, even if it is not on your computer – a pretty neat and useful trick.

Filed under: Guides, Tips

Tags: BitLocker, password, secure, software, USB, vista, win7, windows 7, windows xp