BitLocker on Windows 10 Home edition

Dear community,

I would like to use BitLocker to encrypt my hard drive, but I have the standard 8.1 version, which will become Windows 10 Home version when I upgrade. Neither of those editions come with BitLocker. Do I have to upgrade to the Pro version to get it?

Yes, only Pro and Enterprise editions have BitLocker

If yes, what would be the best thing to do? Upgrade to 8.1 Pro, then upgrade to 10 Pro? Or upgrade to 10 Pro after installing 10 Home?

I would take the free offer and upgrade Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 Home then purchase a Windows 10 Pro Pack for $99 and perform an Easy Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro

How to Perform an Easy Upgrade in Windows 10

Isn't there any way to use BitLocker on a standard Windows version?

You can use third party alternatives such as Truecrypt but you will have to determine if they are compatible with Windows 10.

At the time of writing, Windows 10 will be rolled out tomorrow! It will be free to download for one year, so I don't need to hurry... right?

That is correct, you have until July 28th 2016 to take advantage of the free upgrade.

Yours sincerely,
HdeVries

That doesn't make much sense Andre. Full drive encryption usually runs silently in the background without user intervention. You just have to turn it on.

The more I dig into this, the more puzzled I get. See this Ars Technica article. Apart from BitLocker, Windows appears to have another tool called "Device encryption". This tool is very similar to BitLocker. It uses the same encryption technology. Unlike BitLocker, Device encryption is present in *all* editions of Windows, including Home. For some reason though, it bears much higher system requirements. So high that almost no computer supports it!

So there's BitLocker for $99, and Device encryption for free which almost no one can use. Is MS serious about this? With so many free alternatives and competition? (Apple, Android, etc.) Yep... TrueCrypt might indeed be a good idea.

I have written about setting up BitLocker and its something the average user will not tend to have the aptitude to do. Running in the background is different from setting it up.

Read my article:

How to Encrypt Your Hard Drive With BitLocker - Notebooks.com

Bitlocker definitely doesn't work at the moment on Windows 10 Pro. I upgraded without decypting my USB flash drive before hand, not knowing that I would have no access to my files when I did so. Here's what it looks like when I double click to enter the password:

Tried this fix. Did not work.

And, my current operating system:

Here's the Windows 8.1 Instructions:

I work with the fed government and need bitlocker for Windows 10 (free update). How do I make this happen? There doesn't seem to be a clear straight forward answer.

Thanks

James

Andre Da Costa linked to a How to article in this thread. Did that work?

And of course, you will need Pro, Enterprise or Education. Home doesn't have BitLocker.