Should I activate BitLocker? (bearing in mind i'm a student)

[BGrewer]

I've looked at a couple of online forums and I've seen that BitLocker is installed on the Pro 3 and was wondering if its worth activating BitLocker, what do you guys think?

 

[xandros9]

Do you want to encrypt the data on your disk?

There's a performance hit, but will it make a difference?

Personally, I'd do it, but I'm a bit more security conscious in that regard. Normal people? Eh.
I thought it was enabled by default though. (I could be wrong)

 

[Simacca]

It is enabled by default. I disabled mine for an ssd speed boost.

 

[Blackadder_100]

My daughter's new Asus T200 seems to have Bitlocker enabled by default ( she didn't know it existed). She plugged a friends external hard drive in to copy some music over and now when her friend plugs it into her own laptop it asks for an unlock code. My daughter found a code on the T200 but it doesn't work on the other machine. Any idea of a fix? I can't get to the laptop as she's in New Zealand and I'm in the UK. Would appreciate any help as her friend isn't happy!

 

[pankaj981]

Does her friend see a lock icon in my computer on the hard drive when connected? If yes then your daughter might have accidently enabled Bitlocker on the hard drive. The default password would be her Microsoft account password. What she could do is connect the hard drive again to her T200 and right click and disable encryption and that should do it

 

[Blackadder_100]

Does her friend see a lock icon in my computer on the hard drive when connected? If yes then your daughter might have accidently enabled Bitlocker on the hard drive. The default password would be her Microsoft account password. What she could do is connect the hard drive again to her T200 and right click and disable encryption and that should do it

Thanks very much for the information. I'll pass that on to my daughter and hopefully it will help to resolve the issue. Thanks again!

 

[Blackadder_100]

Apologies for hijacking this thread...

I passed on the info to my daughter and received this reply...
"I've tried right clicking on the drive but there's no option to disable it from there. I managed to find where to disable bitlocker from the control panel which I've done and now my hard drive is also locked because it thinks my laptop is now a different machine, I tried turning it back on again but it doesn't make any difference now. I've never been asked to enter a password, only this 48 digit key...I'm at a complete loss! I can probably format the drives which will allow us to use them again but everything will be wiped..."

I have no experience of using Bitlocker and would be grateful for any further advice in resolving this unholy mess, thanks!

 

[pankaj981]

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recovery-keys-faq

 

[BGrewer]

I've just checked that BitLocker is on, sorry if I wasted anyone's time :/

 

[pankaj981]

^^ actually I wouldn't be too worried to turn it off on the internal partition. In fact I have bitlocker disabled on the internal partition of my Venue 8 Pro but I've it enabled on the microSD card because it's easy to remove

 

[BGrewer]

How do you enable it on the MicroSD?

 

[pankaj981]

All you need to do is right-click on the drive and click enable. The feature is only supported on the Pro version though. My DV8P doesn't have the Pro version so I had to encrypt the card on my MSI GT60 first and then use it.

 

[anon(7901790)]

Do you want to encrypt the data on your disk?

There's a performance hit, but will it make a difference?

Personally, I'd do it, but I'm a bit more security conscious in that regard. Normal people? Eh.
I thought it was enabled by default though. (I could be wrong)

The SSD is enabled by default, it's the MicroSD card that isn't. I haven't noticed a performance hit either.

 

[SpartanApps]

Bitlocker is nothing but a ballache! avoid!

 

[pankaj981]

Bitlocker is nothing but a ballache! avoid!

Care to explain?

 

[hotphil]

Whether or not it's worth enabling depends on a number of factors and risk considerations.
In most real-world situations outside of employer-owned kit, I'd come down on the side of "no". Especially for SD and other removable media - makes it harder to recover the user's files from their "broken" cards.

 

[pankaj981]

^^ agreed. It really depends on the need of the end user. For me I would rather have it enabled on my removable storage than on the internal memory just because removable storage it's easy to lose or get stolen especially when you have multiple of them. I wish Windows Phones allowed microSD encryption natively so at least I could start using my microSD card for storing pictures and not worry about it in case I lose my phone (or in this case my tablet)