How to Lock Drive in Windows 10 - Step By Step Guide

Privacy and cyber security are becoming important aspects of computing. As we become more and more reliant on computers, our data is becoming important. In order to protect our drives, we need to protect them.

The data we write and store needs to be safely guarded in our computer systems. Locking our drives is a simple and easy task that a whole lot of us need to perform. Computers often provide these functions. The simplest lock that we see is the password we see and often use.

But that password is not going to hold out. When you are trying to prevent hackers from entering your data, locking your drive is a good bet. But how do you do it? And why exactly should you do this?

Why should you lock drives in windows?

We mentioned above that most computers and systems nowadays are password protected. However, password protection is an easy and small obstacle that most hackers can easily overcome.

Locking drives and all their partitions are one of the easier ways to securely lock your data. In order to prevent data stealing, locking hard drives is one of the most traditional, secure, and easy methods.

What is Encryption?

Encryption is a process through which it becomes possible to safely protect your data. Without proper encryption, a lot of simple tasks become impossible. Imagine surfing the web on unsafe websites, shady IPs. Encryptions allow for safer browsing of the internet.

It is important to protect your personal data and information. It is not about whether you need encryption or not; it's about how much you need. If you are someone who deals with sensitive data, encryption is quite important.

How to lock your hard drives?

Locking drives is an easy process. Encryption is the process through which data is often protected, and drives are locked. Microsoft makes most of the popular operating systems in the world. Accordingly, one of the ways to encrypt or lock your device is through Bitlocker in Windows 10.

There are other ways to lock your drive-in windows 10 without BitLocker as well. Let us look at some of the ways to do so.

How to lock your drive in windows 10 with Bitlocker

• Step one is to boot up your computer. Then you further need to click on start. And type 'BitLocker. Now select the 'Manage BitLocker' option.

• Once there, you now need to select the drive that you want to lock or encrypt. Once you do that, you need to turn on your BitLocker.

• Another step is to choose the method to unlock the drive. Most people prefer passwords. While you also get an option to use your smart card.

• If you select a password, you need to enter the password twice. Obviously, you need to ensure that the password is different letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols.

• Step 5 is essential since you need to decide where you want your recovery data to be saved. It is important to store it safely as well since your decryption depends on that data.

• You need to choose what part of your drive you want encrypted. You can encrypt just the used space or the entire drive.

• Next, you need to select 'start encrypting' to be the process of encryption. Once this process begins, it will take some time to finish.

How to lock drive without the use of Bitlocker in Windows 10

There are 6 possible steps to locking your drive on Windows 10 without using BitLocker. A lot of Windows systems might not have BitLocker, or you personally might not prefer using it. Anyways, below are the six useful steps to lock your drive.

• Open your windows, and click on start. Next, search for 'local group policy editor. Click on 'edit group policy.

• Once the local group policy editor is open, you will need to navigate onto the left-hand side of the windows. There you will see many folders, including 'Administrative Templates.' Click on administrative templates, and you will see an expanded version on the right side of the window. Now select Windows Components.

• Once you click on windows components, the next thing you need to do is select 'file explorer' from the expanded tab on the right side of the windows.

• Once you open file explorer, you need to search and navigate to 'Prevent access to drives from my computer. You need to double-click it and open it.

• If you followed till here correctly and managed to find 'Prevent access to drives from my computer, you are on the right track. Now, once you double-click it, you will be greeted by another window. The first thing to be done here is to enable the option 'enabled.' Next, you need to select the option of drives that you wish to encrypt and lock. After that, you simply need to click on apply and then ok.

• Note: doing this step will lock your drive. Be careful before you do this since only you will be able to reverse it manually.

• The sixth step involves trying to unlock the drive simply because there is no other way to do so. The process for unlocking the said drive is the same till step 4. The only difference here is that you need to set the option 'enabled' to 'not configured.' Now apply and exit.

Another way to protect your drives in windows 10

There is another way to lock your drives without the use of BitLocker. The problem is that BitLocker is not available for the Windows 10 home version. It is available for professional, education, and enterprise versions. Thus, places like escape rooms/mystery rooms often lock their drives containing sensitive data using BitLocker.

For this method to work, you require a system that has TPM or Trusted platform module version 2 with modern standby enabled. You will also need a unified extensible firmware interface or UEFI firmware. Both of these are quite common and can be easily found in most modern systems.

Moving on, once you ensure your operating system has met these requirements, you can further begin encryption.

• Like all other steps, the first step would include you turning on your system and opening 'start.'

• Once you start, you will need to search for system information. Click on the top result.

• Note: run this as a system administrator to avoid issues.

• Once the system information window is open, you need to select 'system information.' This should expand it.

• Now on the right-hand side of your window, you will see a lot of information. From that information, you need to search for 'device encryption support.'

• If your device meets the requirements, the value for the item should be 'meets prerequisites.' Now you know that your system supports encryption.

• Now open your settings.

• Select update and security and click on it.

• Now search for the option for 'device encryption. You should be able to click on it and see the option to 'turn on' device encryption.

To disable device encryption, you just need to 'turn off the device encryption from settings again.

Conclusion

Locking your drives is not a new practice and has been routinely used to safeguard sensitive data. Whether it is your personal information, client's information, or something even more important, you do not want to leave it unlocked. This is especially true if you work from home and multiple people use your computer.

It is easy to lose all your data due to a careless misclick. Locking your drive-in windows 10 is quite easy, and it doesn't take a whole lot of time either. The above-mentioned 3 ways to lock your drive-in Windows 10 will help you a lot.

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