How to Use BitLocker to Encrypt and Password-Protect Data on USB Drives Note: Starting with Windows 11, BitLocker to Go requires a USB flash drive.

This guide will share how you can use BitLocker to Encrypt and add a Password on USB Devices. Also, to unlock the USB device on any other machine, you would need BitLocker to be installed on it. It is possible to encrypt almost any device like your hard disk partitions or a USB or thumb drives. To unlock the drive and turn off BitLocker Drive Encryption for that drive (e.g.BitLocker is a drive encryption technique used to secure your data with a password, and data is encrypted using a strong encryption algorithm. The “ manage-bde -status” command from an admin Command Prompt window tells which drives are encrypted using BDE and the encryption method used. Run the command manage-bde.exe /? for more information. Though Windows Home Edition doesn’t have the BDE GUI in the Control Panel, you can unlock and disable BDE using manage-bde.exe command-line.

When you use it on another device, you’ll be asked to type the 48-digit recovery password to unlock the drive. Let’s say you have a local or external drive that’s encrypted with BitLocker using a Windows 10 Pro (or higher) computer. Remove BitLocker Encryption from a drive via Windows 10/11 Home Edition Of course, this assumes that you have the BDE encryption key/48-digit recovery password. This article tells how to unlock a BDE-encrypted drive and remove the BitLocker Drive Encryption from a drive using Windows 11/10 Home Edition. Still, you can unlock that drive and disable BDE on a device running any edition, including Windows 10 Home using the command-line tool named manage-bde.exe. The “Manage BitLocker” Control Panel applet doesn’t exist in Windows 10/11 Home Edition.

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