Hey, all.
I have a 1 TB external USB 3.0 HDD that I use as a backup drive. I'm thinking of encrypting it using BitLocker (not sure which method I'm going to end up using). What are the chances of BitLocker corrupting the drive during encryption/decryption? Have any of you had good experience with BitLocker?
I've been using BitLocker for years without issue or performance degradation. Currently using BitLocker on two of my 5 drives in my system. That said, I've not encrypted an external drive, but I don't see an issue there as well.
The only warning I would give is if you lose your password or encryption key, you'll have to reformat the drive to be able to access it again as there's no way to recover the key (been there, done that). And the notion of obtaining it though the TPM module is simply false.
Good luck.
Bitlocker has an excellent track record, I too have been using it now for about five years without any problems. I've encrypted SD cards, SSD's, and HHD's. I also like using other encryption software, such as Folderlock 7, Steganos, and Veracrypt, use to use Truecrypt along with Folderlock 6. Just don't lose your password or encryption key, as already stated.
Create your password, write it down, and or save it digitally somewhere where you can retrieve if needed. Then use that password to encrypt with, and ONLY that password, you'll be just fine and dandy.
Alright, I tried BitLocker out on a 16 GB USB Flash Drive & it worked flawlessly. I even did a couple of reboots while encryption/decryption was paused (for some reason, I could not eject the drive; I had to restart in order to actually eject it; I know about making the disk online/offline, but I'm scared that might mess the disk up) & the drive did not give me any errors afterwards. I'm going to try BitLocker out on my external HDD tomorrow to see how it goes. I have to admit, I'm scared since this drive has a lot of data I'm not willing to lose. I'm not concerned about the Recovery Key/Password since I have lots of ways to back it up (MS Account, Google Drive, my phone...). Thank you for your support!
If it's important data, I would back it up, or make a copy on another drive first. Always keep important data in at least two separate places, if possible.
UPDATE: My external HDD was encrypted successfully with no errors (backed up all its data to my internal drives just in case it ended up failing). Took like 6 hours to fully encrypt the drive, but everything is working flawlessly now. Again, thank you everyone for all your support! :)
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