Written by
Jenny Zeng
Summary: Want to turn on BitLocker To Go on your removable media like USB? This post tells you the exact steps to encrypt USB with BitLocker To Go on Windows and Mac. You can free download BitLocker To Go for Windows 11/10/8/7 Home and BitLocker To Go Reader for Mac from the button below. --From iBoysoft
Encrypting a removable drive is an effective method of protecting data stored on it from unauthorized access. The most recommended way to encrypt a USB flash drive, SD card, SSD, or HDD on a computer is by using BitLocker To Go.
After your external drive is encrypted with BitLocker To Go, the operating system will prompt you for the password before allowing you to read and write to the drive when it's connected to a computer. This means that your data won't be exposed to unauthorized people even if your drive is stolen or lost.
In this article, we'll explain how to use BitLocker To Go on USB drives on Windows Pro/Enterprise/Education and how to download BitLocker To Go for Windows 11/10/8/7 Home editions, and how to access and write to your BitLocker-encrypted drive on Mac with iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac.
What is BitLocker To Go?
BitLocker To Go - a new feature that came with Windows 7 - is a full-disk encryption protection technology for removable storage devices, such as USB flash drives, SD cards, external hard disk drives, SSDs, and other drives formatted with NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, or exFAT file system.
Essentially, BitLocker To Go is just the name for BitLocker when it's being used to encrypt portable drives. Hence, BitLocker To Go is only available on the Windows versions that BitLocker is compatible with. That being said, it's not natively supported on Windows Home and Windows 7 Professional editions.
Here's a list of the editions that support BitLocker To Go:
- Windows 11: Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions
- Windows 10: Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions
- Windows 8 and 8.1: Pro and Enterprise editions
- Windows 7: Enterprise and Ultimate editions
- Windows Server 2008 and later
Since BitLocker is a system feature, you don't need to download BitLocker To Go if your PC supports it. However, If you have a Windows PC that doesn't offer BitLocker To Go or have a Mac computer, you'll need to download BitLocker To Go from a reliable source to enable BitLocker encryption on external drives.
During the encryption process, Windows will install a special reader (bitlockertogo.exe) on the USB drive. Like BitLocker, drives encrypted with BitLocker To Go can be opened with a password or smart card, depending on the unlock option selected during the encryption.
If one has forgotten the password or lost the smart card, he or she can still unlock the BitLocker-encrypted drive with the recovery key.
How to encrypt USB with BitLocker To Go on Windows?
If your Windows computer supports BitLocker To Go, you can take the following steps to encrypt your USB or other type of removable storage device with BitLocker.
Note that your drive needs to have a file system that's compatible with Windows to get encrypted by BitLocker To Go. So it needs to be NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, or exFAT-formatted. If it's not, you need to reformat your USB after backing it up.
- Insert your USB into your Windows PC.
- Navigate to "This PC."
- Right-click on the USB drive you want to encrypt and click "Turn on BitLocker."
- Wait for BitLocker to finish preparing your USB drive for encryption.
- When it prompts you to choose how you want to unlock the drive, tick the box next to "Use a password to unlock the drive.
- Enter your password twice and click Next. (BitLocker To Go password requirements: contains uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols.)
- Choose how you want to back up your recovery key and click Next.
・Save to your Microsoft account (Use this one if you trust cloud storage)
・Save to a file
・Print the recovery key - Choose how much of your drive to encrypt and click Next.
・Encrypt used disk space only (faster and best for new drives.)
・Encrypt entire drive (slower but best for drives already in use) - Select "Compatible mode" and click Next.
- Click "Start encrypting."
- When the encryption is complete, click Close.
Look at the BitLocker-encrypted USB in "This PC," and you'll find it now has a gray padlock, which indicates it's currently unlocked. The next time you insert the USB into a Windows PC, you'll notice that the padlock is gold, which means that it's locked. If you want to access it, you'll need to enter its password.
If you trust a computer, you can set BitLocker To Go auto unlock the drive. When prompted to unlock the drive, enter your password, click "More options," tick the box beside "Automatically unlock on this PC" and click Unlock.
Share this post to help others enable BitLocker To Go on USB drives.
Free Download BitLocker To Go for Windows11/10/8/7 Home
As we mentioned before, BitLcoker To Go isn't available on the Home edition of Windows and the Professional edition of Windows 7. Fortunately, you can still get BitLocker To Go download for Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 from the button below.
M3 BitLocker Loader for Windows is a trustworthy encryption tool that's designed to enable BitLocker encryption on computers that lack the feature. It helps you encrypt external drives including USBs, memory cards, SSDs, hard disk drives, etc with BitLocker, preventing unwanted access to your data.
This bitlockertogo.exe app is better than the default BitLocker in the sense that it can resume the encryption process if it's paused or interrupted without causing data loss and that it can lock the Bitlocker drive without requiring you to reboot your PC.
How to enable BitLocker To Go on Windows11/10/8/7 Home & other editions that don't have BitLcoker:
Step 1: Download and install the BitLocker To Go software - M3 BitLocker Loader.
Step 2: Plug your drive into your PC.
Step 3: Enter your password twice and click Next.
Step 4: Choose a way to back up the recovery key and click Next.
Step 5: Wait until the encryption process finishes.
Free Download BitLocker To Go for Mac
You may be wondering whether there's BitLocker To Go for Mac (bitlockertogo.exe for Mac), which allows you to access the BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac computers or encrypt external drives on Mac with BitLocker.
The answer is YES and iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac is exactly what you need to use BitLocker drives on Mac.
iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac is the most powerful BitLocker for macOS and OS X software in the market. With this BitLocker To Go reader for Mac, you can get full read-write access to your BitLocker encrypted drives on a Mac computer without any limitations. It supports various types of drives, such as HDD, SSD, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.
iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac works well on Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMac with macOS 14 Sonoma, 13 Ventura, macOS 12 Monterey, macOS 11 Big Sur, 10.15 Catalina, 10.14 Mojave, 10.13 High Sierra Operating Systems. In addition, it's compatible with Intel-based, T2, M1, and M2 Macs.
Tutorial to access BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac computer using iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac:
Step 1: Download BitLocker To Go for Mac on your Mac computer.
Step 2: Double-click the installation package and follow the wizard to complete the installation.
Step 3: Insert a BitLocker encrypted drive into the Mac computer.
Step 4: Open the Applications folder, find iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac, then launch it.
Step 5: Select your BitLocker encrypted drive in this software and then click the "Open" icon to continue.
Step 6: Enter the password (or recovery key) and click "Unlock" to open BitLocker drive on Mac.
Do note that If you lost the password and recovery key, iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac cannot break into the BitLocker encrypted drive and access any data stored on it.
Step 7: After unlocking BitLocker encrypted drive, the BitLocker encrypted drive will be mounted as a regular drive. You can use it the same as your Mac's native drive to read, write, delete, view, or delete its content.
Step 8: After reading/writing the BitLocker encrypted drive, please click Lock and then click Eject in iBoysoft BitLocker for Mac to safely eject the BitLocker encrypted drive from your Mac computer. Please don't yank out the BitLocker encrypted drive without being properly ejected in case of data loss.
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