How To Encrypt/Decrypt A USB Flash Drive In Windows 7
Posted October 15, 2009 – 9:53 pm in: Windows 7, Windows 7 Tweaks
Portable storage is affordable and devices such as USB flash drives have shrunken in size. Most of the Windows users use USB flash sticks to carry data on the go.
Due the size factor, we might lose the USB flash drives and also the important data. So if you are carrying crucial data on these flash sticks, you can easily protect your data with a password using Windows 7’s BitLocker To Go feature.
BitLocker To Go feature is an extension to the BitLocker feature. With BitLocker To Go one can protect data on USB storage devices such as flash memory drives, and portable hard drives with a password.
To encrypt a USB storage device in Windows 7:
1. Connect your USB drive to the system.
2. Go to Windows explorer and right-click on your USB drive and select Turn on BitLocker.
Or
Alternately, type BitLocker Drive Encryption in Start menu search box and hit enter to open BitLocker Drive Encryption window. Scroll down to see Turn On BitLocker option next to your USB drive. Click on the Turn On BitLocker option to continue.
3. BitLocker Drive Encryption dialog-box will open with two options:
# Use a password to unlock the drive
# Use my smart card to unlock the drive
Let us select the first option as Smart cards cannot be used with the BitLocker To Go reader, which allows you to unlock drives on computers running Windows Vista or Windows XP.
4. Select Use a password to unlock the drive and enter the password. Note that password should contain upper and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces and symbols.
Click Next to continue.
5. In this step, you will have options to save your recovery key. If you forget your password you can use the recovery key to access the protected drive
Click on Save the recovery key to a file option to save the file or use Print the recovery key option to print the key.
6. Click next to start the encryption process. This process may take few minutes depending on the data size on drive, USB drive speed and also system performance.
To decrypt the drive:
1. Type BitLocker Drive Encryption in Start menu search box and hit enter to open BitLocker Drive Encryption window.
2. Scroll down to see Turn Off BitLocker option. Click on the Turn Off BitLocker option and then click on Decrypt Drive button. The decryption will start and take a few minutes to complete.
Note: BitLocker To Go feature is available only in Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
Tags: Encrypt Files In USB, Encrypt USB Drive In Windows 7
- No Related Post
- 14 Excellent Windows 7 themes
- How to make bootable USB
- 27 Beautiful Vista logon screens
- How to install Windows 7 from USB
- Remove Watermark from Windows 7 desktop
- Windows 7 tips & tricks
- Windows 7 inside out free chapters
- Windows 7 step by step free chapters
- What’s new in Windows 7
- Windows 7 impact world wide
- Using Windows XP mode in Windows 7
- Power management in Windows 7
- How to use Winodws easy transfer
- How to activate Windows 7
- Windows 7 VHD Features
- Dual boot from VHD (Windows 7 & R2)
- Windows XP to Windows 7 migration
- What’s new in Windows 7
This content has passed through fivefilters.org.
Incoming search terms for the article:
decrypting a flash drive - unencrypt encrypted usb flashdrive - Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool 1 0 -More and more users are switching to 64-bit version of Windows these days. The obvious advantage of 64-bit Windows over 32-bit is that the former one can utilise more than 4GB of RAM efficiently.
So if you are planning to purchase a 64-bit Windows 7 copy and would like to know if your system is ready for the same or not, you can use the tiny BITS tool. BITS is a portable tool for Windows 7, Vista and XP to know your system’s compatibility with 64-bit Windows.
Download, extract and simply run the tool to know about your CPU type (32 or 64), your current Windows… Continue reading
Weather Center is an awesome application to view the current weather conditions in a jiffy. The tool displays the current temperature in the system tray area and is fully customizable.
Upon running the tool for the first time, you will be given an opportunity to to setup the tool by entering your current location. Once done, you can view the current temperature in system tray area and also can view addition information such as dew point, sun rise time, sun set time, humidity and more by opening Weather Center window.
Key features:
- Up-to-date weather information
- Weather alert options
- Weather data format
Rafael Rivera and Zheng have released a handy application for Windows 7 called Geosense, a Windows Sensor, that provides the Location and Sensors platform in Windows 7 with accurate and reasonably ubiquitous positioning information without requiring or the assistance of GPS hardware, enabling more practical location-based applications and scenarios on Windows 7.
Geosense is available for both x86 & x64 versions of Windows 7. You can download the setup file from the link mentioned below. More information is available at the Geosense download page.