Protect Your Pen Drive And Give The Password with BitLocker

BitLocker can help protect the data on your drive by encrypting it. Following the below instructions will allow you to turn BitLocker on aThumb drive. Note Bitlocker is only available in Windows 7 Ultimate.

1. Plug your Flash Drive into a USB port.
2. Click Start.
3. Click on Computer.
4. Right Click on the drive that contains your Flash Drive.  If you don't know, remove your flash drive and re-insert it into the same USB port.  It will appear on the 'Computer' screen.
5. Click on 'Turn on BitLocker'.
6. A screen will pop up that says BitLocker Drive Encryption (Drive name).
7. Under 'Choose how you want to unlock this drive, click on either Use a password to unlock the drive, or, Use my smart card to unlock the drive.  Note, you will need your smart card and smart card pin to unlock the drive.
8. Click Next.
9. Under 'How do you want to store your recovery key?' choose either Save the recovery key to a file or Print the recovery key. For this example we will save to a file.
10. Click the location you wish the key to be saved in.
11. Click on Save.
12. On the previous screen named 'BitLocker Drive Encryption, it will now say your key has been saved.
13. Click Next.
14. The next screen will ask 'Are you ready to encrypt this drive?
15. Click Start Encrypting.
16. The Encryption process with take a while depending on the size of your drive.

If you decide later that you don't want BitLocker to protect your Flash Drive, you can turn it off at any time using the following steps:

1. Click Start.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Click on System and Security.
4. Click on BitLocker Drive Encryption.
5. Find the drive listed that contains your Flash Drive.
6. Click on Turn off BitLocker.
7. A screen will pop up that will ask if you want to decrypt your drive.
8. Click yes.
9. This process will take approximately as long as it took to encrypt it in the steps listed above.