Tech
Here’s how I encrypt my Windows PC without BitLocker
BitLocker is the most common way to encrypt your Windows PC to protect it against data theft in the event that someone steals your PC, but it isn’t the only option. If your PC doesn’t have BitLocker and you want something more fully-featured than Device Encryption, VeraCrypt is probably the tool for you.
What is wrong with BitLocker and Device Encryption?
Device Encryption and BitLocker are great from a technical perspective. They can leverage the TPM module on your PC to securely handle encrypting and decrypting your drive.
There is one major problem: BitLocker is only available on Pro (or higher) versions of Windows 11.
All of this creates a potential expense that you may not want to incur. While Device Encryption is free, it isn’t as flexible as BitLocker, and may not offer what you need or want. But who wants to pay up for Windows Pro if that is the only extra feature that you need?
Here’s how I safely and easily test unknown apps on Windows 11
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
VeraCrypt is free and open-source
Luckily, there is an open-source program available to fill in the gaps. VeraCrypt, once TrueCrypt, is a free and open-source solution that offers most of the features you might want from BitlLocker and then some. As an added perk, VeraCrypt doesn’t require any speical hardware to function. If your PC can run VeraCrypt at all, you’re good.
VeraCrypt is flexible, and can be used in a handful of different ways:
- to create an encrypted folder within a PC
- to create encrypted flash drives or external hard drives
- to encrypt multiple hard drives on a PC
- to encrypt the boot drive of your PC
- to create a hidden volume that won’t even reveal encrypted contents until you enter a separate password
Using VeraCrypt to secure your Windows PC
VeraCrypt is pretty user-friendly, and will walk you through the process of encrypting your PC.
You must be extremely careful not to lose the password that is used to encrypt your drive. If you do, you will not be able to recover your files unless you have a supercomputer and several million years to brute force the job.
Here’s how to encrypt your boot drive.
Once you’ve downloaded and install VeraCrypt, click System > Encrypt System Partition/Drive
Once you do that, the wizard will walk you through most of the steps. I’d recommend sticking with the default options for the most part, though you can tweak the encryption algorithm if you’d like.
The single most important part of this process is password selection. VeraCrypt provides some guidance on what makes a good password, and I’d recommend following their advice. It is absolutely essential that you save this password somewhere safe! If you lose it, you will permanently lose access to your Windows system drive, which contains your documents, pictures, music, videos, and downloads by default.
If you use a password manager like BitWarden, you can use it to generate a robust, secure password and save that password so you don’t lose it.
Once you pick the password, there are a few more small steps, then your main drive will be encrypted.
Setting up an encrypted folder with VeraCrypt
Not everyone needs their entire PC encrypted, or even their boot drive. If you want to create an encrypted folder that contains sensitive files, you can do that. VeraCrypt will just treat the entire thing like a small encrypted storage drive that is connected to your PC.
First, begin by clicking “Create Volume” and choose where you’d like the encrypted “folder” to be. Then follow the wizard as it walks you through the creation process. The default settings are probably fine if you just want a plain encrypted folder. There are two important settings you need to pay attention to: the size of the encrypted drive and the file format.
You can set the size to whatever you need, but it is pretty important to pick a file format that is universal and doesn’t have weird limitations. I’d recommend using exFAT, since every major operating system supports it and it isn’t limited like FAT32 is.
Once done, just click “Select File,” pick the file you previously created, and then hit “Mount.”
The encrypted folder will appear in File Explorer just like a new hard drive or flash drive that you’ve connected to your PC.
Best of all, once you have your encrypted file, you can just copy and paste it to move. Want it on a flash drive? Just copy it over. Don’t like the original folder? Just copy and paste it somewhere else.
It is an incredibly flexible system that makes moving folders and files securely extremely simple. I prefer it over BitLocker in 99% of cases, even though I have access to it with Windows 11 Pro.
VeraCrypt’s convenience doesn’t just end with its portability on one PC.
You can move drives you encrypted with BitLocker or device encryption between PCs and even operating systems, but it requires that you figure out which app you need for each operating system to make the drive talk to the new PC.
VeraCrypt, on the other hand, supports every major desktop platform, which makes it nice and easy to move a drive from your Windows PC to your Linux PC without messing with figuring out which app you need.
It probably won’t come up every day, but it is a very welcome convenience when it is necessary.
