{"id":943,"date":"2013-03-14T14:28:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T19:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/?p=943"},"modified":"2013-03-14T14:28:15","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T19:28:15","slug":"speed-up-bitlocker-encryption-using-windows-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/2013\/03\/speed-up-bitlocker-encryption-using-windows-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed Up BitLocker Encryption using Windows 8"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been a huge fan of the <a href=\"http:\/\/windows.microsoft.com\/en-US\/windows7\/products\/features\/bitlocker\">BitLocker Drive Encryption<\/a> feature in Windows desktop and server machines.&#160; I have enabled BitLocker on all of my desktop, mobile, and server computers, plus external drives.&#160; I\u2019ve enabled encryption to help ensure that the data remains safe in the event that the drives are lost or stolen.&#160; From my informal testing, I\u2019ve seen minimal overhead related to encryption, and have experienced very few drawbacks.<\/p>\n<p>One potential issue is the process of encrypting a new drive or device.&#160; In earlier versions of BitLocker, the feature required the entire hard drive to be encrypted.&#160; That includes the free space.&#160; I recently purchased a 3TB USB 3.0 drive and noticed that, from my Windows 7 workstation, the process would take 20+ hours to complete (on a completely blank drive).&#160; Fortunately, I realized that Windows 8 includes an enhancement that allows you to choose to encrypt only the used space on the drive?&#160; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"image\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 4px 10px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image\" align=\"right\" src=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/image_thumb.png\" width=\"400\" height=\"322\" \/><\/a>The results?&#160; Encrypting an empty 3TB from a Windows 8 machine (using a USB 2.0) connection took around a minute or so.&#160; Now, I can connect it back to my Windows 7 workstation (all versions of BitLocker are cross-compatible), and start copying the data to the drive.&#160; It\u2019ll encrypt on the fly and will save <em>many<\/em> hours of needless overhead.&#160; You can also use this approach for internal drives, though the hassle of removing and unlocking those might negate the performance improvement.<\/p>\n<p>This is just one small part of the overall improvements to BitLocker in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.&#160; For more information, see the Windows Security article series <a href=\"http:\/\/www.windowsecurity.com\/articles-tutorials\/Windows_Server_2012_Security\/BitLocker-Enhancements-Windows-Server-2012-Windows-8-Part1.html\">BitLocker Enhancements in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8<\/a>.&#160; It includes an in-depth look at how you can use these features on your servers, and how you can enable BitLocker for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) and manage disk encryption throughout your environment.<\/p>\n<p>Just a little tip, for those of us who are still on Windows 7 but would like to take advantage of faster encryption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been a huge fan of the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature in Windows desktop and server machines.&#160; I have enabled BitLocker on all of my desktop, mobile, and server computers, plus external drives.&#160; I\u2019ve enabled encryption to help ensure that the data remains safe in the event that the drives are lost or stolen.&#160; From [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,30,39,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-tips","category-general-systems-admin","category-windows-7","category-windows-8"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":944,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}