BitLocker Drive Encryption [Information Guide 2]

[Sam]

Link to Information Guide 1 - RAID Volumes.

Introduction (Click to View)

Welcome to information guide 2 of the series, in this thread I will be covering the topic of BitLocker drive encryption. Not how to use it but how it works, is configured and comparing it to EFS. I hope you enjoy. This thread belongs in both Windows Vista and Windows 7 so I just posted it here.

BitLocker Drive Encryption

Drive Encryption - Introduction

Drive Encryption allows the entire contents of the drive or volume to be encrypted, including management/system files and folders. Versions of Windows prior to Vista do not offer BitLocker encryption and only offer NTFS security settings, NTFS does offer effective file permissions, compression and encryption (Compared to FAT, FAT32, exFAT) drive encryption make the contents of drive only available to a specific user account.

NOTE: Windows Vista and Windows 7 support drive encryption in the BitLocker product, included with Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

NOTE: Third-party drive encryption products are available for other versions of Windows.

BitLocker

BitLocker use a special chip known as the TPM(Trusted Platform Module), located on the motherboard it securely stores the key used to encrypt drive contents. However you can also use removable storage media such as a USB drives.

As a preventative measure you can create a recovery password or key that can be used if the disk is moved to another computer of if the TPM chip is damaged.

BitLocker requires two drive partitions, one of them to store the unencrypted boot files, if they're encrypted the system cannot boot.

Volumes other than the one with the OS can also be encrypted, using the BitLocker control panel you can choose this option and many more like it, see below for a screen shot of the BitLocker control panel.

Thank you for reading, yes this is quite a short thread but there's not much else to add, thanks for reading

[Carbon Nox]

Since the boot files are stored on a separate drive, would it be required to install programs to (example second drive) E drive? Also what would be the required space for the divers to be included in the boot partition? 25GB?

[whyme?]

TrueCrypt is better but bitlocker comes with 7 so it's good ... read abt it in HowToGeek ...

Thanks sam(security audit manager!!!)

[Lulz]

Thanks for the share bro

[Atthackers]

I personally like using TrueCrypt.

[Sam]

BitLocker is more secure. It utilizes hardware and encryption keys are stored in the TPM chip on the mother board. It's possibly more secure than third party methods.