BitLocker is a powerful encryption feature built into Windows 11 Pro, Education, and Enterprise editions that helps protect your data from unauthorized access. When turned on, BitLocker encrypts your entire drive, requiring authentication before accessing your data — even if the hard drive is removed and connected to another system.

There are two main types of BitLocker encryption

BitLocker Drive Encryption: Used to encrypt fixed internal drives, including the operating system drive. This requires authentication during boot.
BitLocker To Go: Used to encrypt removable drives such as USB flash drives and external hard drives. They can be unlocked on any Windows or macOS system with the correct password or recovery key.
System requirements country email list for using BitLocker
To use BitLocker in Windows 11, you will need:

Windows 11 Pro, Education or Enterprise edition
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip included in UEFI/BIOS
At least two partitions – a system partition and an operating system partition.
Administrator rights
The easiest way to check if your system has a TPM is to use the built-in TPM management tool:

Press Windows+R to open the Run dialog box

Type tpm.mscand press Enter.
Launch a dialog with the tpm.msc command

If TPM is available and enabled, you will see the message “TPM is ready for use” under the Status section.

TPM Management Tool particularly interesting is the showing TPM readiness

Enabling BitLocker in Windows 11
There are several ways to enable BitLocker in Windows 11. We will look at the most effective approaches:

Using the Settings app
Open the Settings app (Windows key+I).
Go to System > Storage.
Scroll down and click Advanced Storage Settings.
Select Disks and Volumes.
Select the drive you want to encrypt and click Properties.
In the BitLocker section, click Turn on BitLocker.
BitLocker option in settings

Using the Control Panel

Open Control Panel.
Go to System and Security > BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Select the drive you want to encrypt and click Turn on BitLocker.
BitLocker Drive Encryption in Control Panel

Using Explorer
Open Explorer.
Right-click the drive south africa numbers you want to encrypt.
Select Turn on BitLocker.
Enable the BitLocker option in File Explorer.

How to Enable Using the command line
Open Command Prompt as administrator.
To encrypt a disk with a password, use:
manage-bde -on X: -pw
Replace X with your drive letter.