Full Guide on Creating and Using BitLocker Windows 10 Home Encrypt USB Flash

While USB flash drives provide a convenient solution for data storage and transfer, their portability comes with inherent security risks. Consider the situation where your USB drive is lost or falls into the wrong hands - can you keep your data safe? The answer is predictable. This is where encryption plays an important role. 

Turning on BitLocker a USB flash drive requires protecting it with a virtual lock. Only individuals with the correct password can unlock the USB drive and access the data stored on it. This extra layer of protection ensures that even if the drive is lost or falls into unauthorized hands, the data remains inaccessible without the necessary authentication.

To encrypt a USB flash drive, Windows has a specialized function called BitLocker To Go. However, this feature is only available on Windows 11/10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. If you are looking forward to using BitLocker Windows 10 Home encrypt USB flash, you need to resort to a third-party tool.

Tutorial to encrypt USB drive on Windows 10 Home

Among all the BitLocker encryption tools, I highly recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This is an all-in-one disk and partition management utility for users running on all editions of Windows 11/10/8/7. The “BitLocker” function in AOMEI Partition Assistant can easily satisfy Windows Home users’ need to use BitLocker encryption on USB drive.

When it comes to enabling USB BitLocker, it shows great advantages including:

Now, you can download the demo version and try how to encrypt USB flash drive with BitLocker from AOMEI Partition Assistant:

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click the "Tools" main tab and select "BitLocker".

Step 2. All drives on the system will be displayed, including operating system drives, fixed data drives, and removable drives. Please find the partition you would like to encrypt BitLocker and click the "Turn on BitLocker" option. (Here, we take the drive D: as an example.)

Step 3. Please set and confirm a password to encrypt the drive and click "Next".

Step 4. Select a way to back up your recovery key. You can either select "Save to a file" or "Print the recovery key".

If you select "Save to a file", please choose a location on your PC to save the recovery key.

Tips: Please do not save the recovery key in the encrypted drive path. For example, it is unable to encrypt D: and save the recovery key on the same D: drive.

It will generate a TXT file with the name: Bitlocker Recovery Key + 45-bit Key. The recovery file will be saved in the TXT file. You can open the file to view the recovery key. Please keep the file.

If you select "Print the recovery key", it will enable the print function on your PC to print the recovery key.

Then, please click the "Next" button to start the encryption process.

Step 5. The encryption process might take time to encrypt the drive. Before the process is finished, please do not terminate the program, remove the drive, or turn off the power. Once the encryption process is finished, please click "Completed". Finally, the drive is BitLocker encrypted.

Start using BitLocker Windows 10 Home encrypt USB flash

After you turn on the BitLocker on the USB drive following the above steps, you can easily start to use the encrypted USB flash drive BitLocker. Generally, there are 4 options available to manage BitLocker encryption: back up the recovery key, change the password, lock the drive, and turn off BitLocker. Let’s have a look at them one by one:

How to lock/unlock the encrypted USB drive

If a drive has already been locked, "Unlock the drive" will be the only available option to manage BitLocker. You need to first unlock the drive before managing the drive BitLocker.

Step 1. To unlock the drive, please click the option "Unlock the drive".

Step 2. There are still 2 ways available to unlock the drive: Use a password to unlock the drive and Use a recovery key to unlock the drive. Please select either way as per your need.

If you select "Use a password to unlock the drive", please enter the right password and then click the "Unlock" button.

Step 3. If the entered password/recovery key is correct, the drive will be unlocked.

Then, if you want to lock the USB again, you can click the option "Lock the drive" to directly lock the drive.

How to back up recovery key for BitLocker drive

Step 1. Find the encrypted USB drive and click the option "Back up recovery key".

Step 2. You will be asked to enter the password you set. Please enter the correct password and click the "Next" button.

Step 3. After you enter the correct password, there are 2 ways available to back up your recovery key: "Save to a file" and "Print the recovery key". Please select a way you prefer and then click the "Next" button.

Step 4. Then, follow the instruction to finish the recovery key backup.

How to change the password of encrypted USB

Step 1. Go ahead to the USB BitLocker drive and click the option "Change password".

Step 2. There are 2 ways available to change the password: Use password to change drive password and Use recovery key to change drive password. Here we choose the second way, please first enter the recovery key, type a new password, and then confirm the new password. After all is set, click the "Modify" button.

Step 3. If the modification is successful, you will get a "Password changed successfully" window.

How to turn off BitLocker on the USB flash drive

Step 1. Go to the encrypted USB flash drive and click the option "Turn off BitLocker".

Step 2. There are still 2 ways available to decrypt the drive: Use password to decrypt the drive and Use recovery key to decrypt the drive. Please select either way as per your need.

If you select "Use a password to decrypt the drive", please enter the right password and then click the "Decrypt" button.

If you select "Use a recovery key to decrypt the drive", please enter the recovery key saved in the TXT file or printed when you encrypted the drive, and then click the "Decrypt" button.

Step 3. Then, the decryption process will start and it might take time to decrypt the drive. Before the process is finished, please do not terminate the program, remove the drive, or turn off the power. Once the decryption process is finished, please click "Completed". Finally, the BitLocker on the drive is decrypted.

Conclusion

That’s a tutorial on creating and using BitLocker Windows 10 Home encrypt USB flash. Since Windows 10 Home does not support BitLocker, a remarkable encryption tool is introduced to you. In addition to encrypting drives, AOMIE Partition Assistant Professional also allows you to clone hard drive using “Disk clone” feature to keep your data safe. Besides, you can use it to format, resize encrypted drive, recover lost files, and more.