VIRTUALBOY BLOG
Are you aware of BitLocker and what it can do? If not, you can read a full lowdown here, however, in a nutshell, BitLocker is a new feature in Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate which prevents a thief who boots another operating system or runs a software hacking tool from breaking Windows Vista file and system protections or performing offline viewing of the files stored on the protected drive. Essentially, it is locking your data down, should your machine fall into the wrong hands...
Up to now, I was under the impression that BitLocker could only be used to encrypt your system drive, i.e. your Vista installation drive, typically C:\. This is partially true - from within the nice user interface that Vista provides within the control panel, you can only BitLocker your system drive, however, if you want to put your command line tools to the test, you gain full control over BitLocker, giving you the ability to enable it on any NTFS volume. Yes. Even USB external IDE drives.
By doing the following:
The result is a list of all the drives on my system, external or otherwise, that can be used for BitLocker. If they can't be used, it simply won't list them. My USB External disk was one of the results, as the picture shows.
Steve Riley provides a host of further information on the BitLocker Command Line Interface, including the different commands you can use to control BitLocker - I'd say this is pretty useful stuff, especially for external USB disks!
I think the key point to note, regardless of whether you are using the command line or the GUI to enable BitLocker - Make a note of your Recovery Key and keep it somewhere safe! You never know!
PingBack from http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/sanderberkouwer/archive/2008/03/24/sc-enario-the-kitchen-cupboard-server.aspx
Thanks for the info! Really helped me. I usually prefer using the command line to perform important admin tasks. And thanks for the link to Steve Riley's site, too :)
Is there something equivilent in Hyper-V Server 2008 R2? Per this link, it appears that Hyper-V server should support bitlocker along with Windows Server.
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/overview.aspx
Hi Dana,
Yes, I believe that BitLocker is part of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, in fact, there are a number of resources that talk about it:
http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/06/25/hyper-v-security-best-practice-use-bitlocker.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2c3c0615-baf4-4a9c-b613-3fda14e84545&DisplayLang=en
http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/07/01/hyper-v-security-how-to-use-bitlocker-to-protect-your-vms.aspx
http://ts2blogs.com/blogs/rwagg/archive/2008/10/24/installing-bitlocker-on-hyper-v-server.aspx
The last link there talks about BitLocker specifically on Hyper-V Server.
Hope that helps!
Matt
Hi, i have an external hardrive, which was working when i had windows xp, now using windows 7.
this particular hardrive did crash and was fixed. it works on the other computer which is xp. when i go into "my computer" it says file system NTFS . Bitlocker status : OFF.
Now i have photographs on the the external which i do not wish to loose i do photography. I am afraid to play around with the bitlocker incase i erase everything, also do not understand what is "open and elevated command propmt" where do i find that?? NOT A COMPUTER BOFFIN IN PLAIN ENGLISH PLEASE.
Hi Debra,
To use Bitlocker in Windows 7, you'll need either Windows 7 Ultimate, or Windows 7 Enterprise. If you have either of those, you don't need to use the Command Line any more - just go to my computer, right click, select Bitlocker, and follow the instructions and it will encrypt your drive for you. Keep your recovery key safe though, just in case.
Thanks!