USB drives, external HDDs, and memory cards—remains the go-to for transferring and backing up data. But these devices are also among the easies ...

Laptops, external drives, and USB sticks are especially vulnerable to data theft, but with Windows and a few tools, you can protect them using encryption.

This post will show you how to Turn On or Off BitLocker to encrypt or decrypt fixed and removable data drives in Windows 11/10.

Without a boot key — either a manually entered PIN, a USB flash drive or a secure module on the PC itself — everything on a BitLocker-encrypted drive is indistinguishable from random data.

If encrypting the system drive with BitLocker, your computer motherboard must have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), or you must use a USB flash drive as a key for unlocking the drive during boot up.

To encrypt a USB drive using BitLocker on Windows: Plug your flash drive into a USB port of your computer. Press Windows + E to open File Explorer.

Without full disk encryption it boots into fresh install of Windows 10 Pro (no crapware, just OEM install) within 11 seconds. With software BitLocker encryption on drive C: it boots within 15 seconds.