Ed Bott - Windows 10 Support Secrets

41 CHAPTER 3 | Staying secure Figure 3-4: Use the Automatically Unlock On This PC option for a removable drive such as a MicroSD card that you use for auxiliary storage. If you lose the drive, whoever finds it won’t have the password and won’t be able to read its files. Encryption is serious stuff. If you’re unable to start your system normally, you might be prompted to enter a recovery key. This is a 48-digit numeric value that serves as a backup for unlocking an encrypted drive. If you can’t access an encrypted drive and you can’t find the recovery key, that data is lost forever. The moral of the story is to back up that key and save it in a safe place. You are prompted to back up your recovery keys when you first turn on BitLocker for a given drive. If you skip this process, or if you just want to save a new copy of the recovery key for a drive that is already encrypted, just open Manage BitLocker in Control Panel and click Back Up Your Recovery Key. (And note that each drive has its own recovery key.) As Figure 3-5 shows, you have a choice of three backup options. (The first option will be slightly different on a device that’s joined to an Active Directory domain or Azure AD.)