How to Encrypt a Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7/XP

By ChesterUpdated on December 17, 2022

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Why encrypting a hard drive?
Q: “I work in a trading company as a supervisor, I have my own computer in my office, sometime my colleague uses my computer for checking quoting information. But I have a lot of private information in my computer, and they are all in a drive, I want to know how password protect or encrypt my personal hard drive so others are not able to access it without my knowledge. Please tell me, thank you.” Asked by Michelle.

Nowadays, information is power, if your personal computing devices are stolen, it means that a lot of your information can be accessed. Information that can be taken advantage of, used against you, or destroyed. Therefore, encrypting your hard drive is very important from preventing information leakage. Hard drive encryption uses a specific algorithm or password to make a hard drive unreadable. No one can access the hard drive without the password.

What are the Benefits of Encrypting a Hard Drive?
There are many benefits to encrypting your hard drive with a password. Some of these benefits include:
- Protects data from being accessed by anyone who does not have your password.
- Prevents cyber attackers from installing malware on the computer.
- Prevents unauthorized copying of files on USB flash drives or external hard drives.

Simply locking your PC with a password is not enough, as hackers can still find ways to bypass the lock screen. In this tutorial, I will show you the effective way to encrypt a hard drive with BitLocker on Windows. In addition, you can password protect a hard drive without BitLocker by using the professional encrypting software such as UkeySoft USB encryption and UkeySoft File Lock.

3 Methods to Encrypt a Hard Drive Windows 11/10/8/7/XP

Method 1: How to Encrypt a Hard Drive on Windows with BitLocker

BitLocker is free software from Microsoft that allows you to encrypt your entire hard drive, as well as to protect your system from unauthorized changes such as malware. BitLocker uses the advanced encryption standard (AES) with 128-bit or 256-bit keys to protect your data. When a hard drive is encrypted via BitLocker, it is not possible to access the data on the hard drive without the correct password. Even if the hard drive is removed from the computer and attached to another machine, it will be inaccessible.

Follow the 6 steps below to encrypt your hard drive via BitLocker in Windows.

Step 1. Go to This PC, right-click the hard drive you wish to encrypt under Devices and drives. Next, select "Turn BitLocker On" from the drop-down menu. You can also go into the control panel or type encryption into the search bar and choose Manage BitLocker to Find BitLocker on Windows 10.

Step 2. Wait to check if your computer can be encrypted. Once BitLocker has finished checking your computer without any errors, you can create a password by selecting "Use a password to unlock the drive".  Enter and reenter your password as required. The passwords should contain uppercase and lowercase letters, spaces, and symbols. Then, click "Next" to go to the following step. 

Step 3. You need to back up your password in case you forget it. Choose a way to back up your recovery key. You can choose "Save to your Microsft account", "Save it a file", or "Print the recovery key". Then, click "Next" to move on.

Step 4. Choose the way to encrypt data, the whole drive, or just all saved files. Choose "Encrypt entire drive" to ensure that all data is protected, even data that you deleted but that might still contain retrievable information. And then, click "Next".

Step 5. On the "Choose which encryption mode to use" screen, you will be asked whether or not to use Windows new disk encryption mode (XTS-AES). Although this provides better security, previous versions of Windows can't decrypt it. So, select "Compatible mode" and then click "Next". 

Step 6. Finally, click "Start encrypting" to allows BitLocker to encrypt your USB drive with a password. Restart your computer as prompted. If you get a password request the next time you boot, you know the entire disk is encrypted and your data is secure.

Method 2: How to Encrypt a Hard Drive on Windows 11/10/8/7/XP with UkeySoft USB encryption

Ukeysoft USB Encryption is a professional encryption tool which can encrypt USB flash drive, external hard drive and divide external drive into two parts after encryption, the secure area and public area. That means you can store normal files in the public area, and store sensitive data or private data in the secure area. No one can access the secure area without password, all the files are encrypted and absolutely safe in the secure area. By doing this, it just takes a minute to password protect your private data with Ukeysoft USB Encryption on Windows.

Step 1. Download the Ukeysoft USB Encryption from the link below.

Step2. please insert the external hard drive that you want to password protect on the USB port of your computer.

Step 3. Choose the hard drive that you want it to be encrypted.

Step 4. Set the Size of secure area will be created.

Step 5. Click on the “Install” button to start creating secure area.

Step 6. Wait for the USB stick to be analyzed.

Step 7. Set the password of the secure area and click on the “OK” button to finish the operation.

Step 8. Then you just have to wait it to be finished.

Method 3: How to Lock Folders, Files on Hard Drive with Password

Ukeysoft File Lock is a military-grade encryption tool for password protecting and hiding files, folders and drives. Encrypting your privacy to protect them. Since it’s a professional data encrypting tool, it uses the latest 128-bit symmetric key - for AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which prevents violent attacks on computers. Ukeysoft File Lock does not affect computers performance, security and speed, protecting the confidentiality and all of your private data with powerful 256-bit algorithms.

Ukeysoft File Lock is a professional encrypting tool which is not just for hard drive encrypting, there are many others features.
- Locking Files/Folders/Drives with Password Safely
- Hide Your File/Folders/Drives, 100% safe
- Make Files/Folders/Drives Undeletable
- File Eraser & Disk Wiper

To Lock Files, Folers, on hard drive with Password in Windows, I am going to show you in detail steps below.

Step 1. Install and launch UkeySoft File Lock on your computer
Download and install UkeySoft File Lock. Then launch it and enter the initial password "123456" to start up. If you have purchased a license code to activate the program, you can set another password.

Step 2. Select Locking File Feature
You'll see different options on the left side under "Local Disk", in this case, select "Locking File" and continue.

Step 3. Select files and folders to Encrypt
Select "Lock File" or "Lock Folder" on the right panel to encrypt any files and folders on Windows with password.

Step 4. Encrypt Password on Files/Folders/Drives 
After completing the above steps, a small window pops up and provides all the relevant content that you are allowed to encrypt. Click “OK” to add the selected files/folders to the program and set up your password. Now no one can open them unless you enter the correct password.

Step 5. UkeySoft File Lock will immediately lock the files and folders with the password you set up when you run this tool at first time. Its shows a Locked status on the locking list.

Step 6. Unlock Files/Folders/Drives
If you need to decrypt a protected folder/file/drive, simply select it and click the "Unlock" button to unlock the encrypted data.

Conclusion

Using BitLocker encryption and professional encryption software such as UkeySoft USB encryption and UkeySoft File Lock are excellent ways to encrypt your hard drive. It has many benefits such as preventing access to data by unauthorized users, preventing installation of malware, and preventing the copying of files to USB flash drives or external hard drives. Ukeysoft File Lock is a great suggestion for encrypting your hard drive due to there are many more features such as hide, lock and monitoring all types of files,folders on Local disk, external disk or even shared folders on network on Windows 11/10/8/7/XP.