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His work has even appeared on the front page of Reddit.Īrticles he's written have been used as a source for everything from books like Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, media theory professor at the City University of New York's Queens College and CNN contributor, to university textbooks and even late-night TV shows like Comedy Central's with Chris Hardwick. His roundups of new features in Windows 10 updates have been called "the most detailed, useful Windows version previews of anyone on the web" and covered by prominent Windows journalists like Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley on TWiT's Windows Weekly. Instructional tutorials he's written have been linked to by organizations like The New York Times, Wirecutter, Lifehacker, the BBC, CNET, Ars Technica, and John Gruber's Daring Fireball. The news he's broken has been covered by outlets like the BBC, The Verge, Slate, Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, ZDNet, The Next Web, and Techmeme. Beyond the column, he wrote about everything from Windows to tech travel tips. He founded PCWorld's "World Beyond Windows" column, which covered the latest developments in open-source operating systems like Linux and Chrome OS. He also wrote the USA's most-saved article of 2021, according to Pocket.Ĭhris was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Beyond the web, his work has appeared in the print edition of The New York Times (September 9, 2019) and in PCWorld's print magazines, specifically in the August 2013 and July 2013 editions, where his story was on the cover. With over a decade of writing experience in the field of technology, Chris has written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Reader's Digest, IDG's PCWorld, Digital Trends, and MakeUseOf. Chris has personally written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times-and that's just here at How-To Geek. If you'd like to use a container rather than, say, encrypt your existing system or storage drive, check out our guide to creating an encrypted container file with BitLocker.įor this article, we're going to concentrate on enabling BitLocker for an existing physical drive.Ĭhris Hoffman is the former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. With BitLocker, you create a virtual hard drive, and then encrypt it. In other encryption products, you usually create an encrypted container, and then mount it as a drive in Windows when you need to use it. Related: How to Create an Encrypted Container File With BitLocker on Windows That could be your system drive, a different physical drive, or a virtual hard drive (VHD) that exists as a file and is mounted in Windows. BitLocker works by encrypting entire drives. It's a bit of a misnomer, but you can achieve a similar effect. Many guides out there talk about creating a BitLocker container that works much like the kind of encrypted container you can create with products like TrueCrypt or Veracrypt. We recommend Device Encryption if your computer supports it, BitLocker for Pro users who can't use Device Encryption, and VeraCrypt for people using a Home version of Windows where Device Encryption won't work.Įncrypt an Entire Drive or Create an Encrypted Container? However, starting with Windows 8.1, the Home and Pro editions of Windows include a "Device Encryption" feature (a feature also included in Windows 10) that works similarly. Note: BitLocker Drive Encryption and BitLocker To Go require a Professional or Enterprise edition of Windows 8 or 10, or the Ultimate version of Windows 7. Related: Should You Upgrade to the Professional Edition of Windows 10? In this article, we're going to talk about how you can set it up on your PC.
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BitLocker has been around in Windows long enough to be considered mature, and is an encryption product generally well-regarded by security pros. When TrueCrypt controversially closed up shop, they recommended their users transition away from TrueCrypt to using BitLocker or Veracrypt. Encrypt an Entire Drive or Create an Encrypted Container?īitLocker is a tool built into Windows that lets you encrypt an entire hard drive for enhanced security.