Introduction

Windows 8 offers the best way to protect portable storage devices like USB connected drives and hard drives which does not exist in Windows prior to Vista. Microsoft offers BitLocker based on full disk encryption technologies.
Note
In Windows 8, BitLocker and BitLocker To Go require Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise.
Both BitLocker and BitLocker To Go provide a full disk encryption facility, unlike the other older Microsoft encryption features. It is applied at the file or folder level. But now Windows 8 provides it in a slightly different feature present in the Control Panel called BitLocker Drive Encryption.
To apply the BitLocker feature from the Control Panel do the following steps.
Step 1
Open the start screen in Windows 8; see.
start-screen-in-windows8.jpg
Step 2
Enter Control Panel into the search box.
search-option-in-windows8.jpg
Step 3
The All control panel items window opens where you select the BitLocker Drive encryption option.
Bitlocker-drive-encryptiion-option.jpg
Step 4
Select the turn on BitLocker option of the D Drive within the BitLocker Drive encryption window.
turn-on-bitlocker-in-windows8.jpg
Step 5
Checked the use a password to unlock the Drive. And enter the password.
password-to-unlock-option-in-windows8.jpg
Step 6
Click on the save to a file option. For this you can save a recovery key as a file in your system.
save-as-a-file-in-windows8.jpg
Step 7
Go to the location where you want to save the key as a file.
file-save-loction-in-windows8.jpg
Step 8
Check the Encrypt used disk space only (faster and best for new PC's and drives) option.
encryption-option-in-windows8.jpg
Step 9
Click on the Start encryptng button. For starting the encryption of drive D:
start-encryption-button-in-windows8.jpg
Step 10
Then you will see the Encryption process.
encryption-process-in-windows8.jpg
Step 11
Finally the Encryption process completes successfully.
complete-encryption-in-windows8.jpg

Summary

In this article, we learned about Protect Portable Storage With BitLocker in Windows 8.