Are you wondering Windows 10 Home should have BitLocker or not? Although BitLocker is not enabled in Windows 10 Home, you can still protect your data by using Device encryption or resorting to a third-party BitLocker tool.
Windows 10 Home should have BitLocker? Of course not. Windows 10 Home does not natively include BitLocker, which is a drive encryption feature. BitLocker is typically available in higher editions of Windows 10 (11), such as Pro, Enterprise, and Education.
BitLocker is a security feature that encrypts the entire drive to help protect the data on it from unauthorized access. When BitLocker is enabled, the data on the drive is encrypted, and it requires a key to unlock and access the information. This feature is particularly useful for securing sensitive data on devices, especially in professional and enterprise environments.
If you have Windows 10 Home and wish to use a similar encryption feature, you may need to explore third-party encryption solutions, as BitLocker is not included in the Home edition. Keep reading to get the details.
A powerful partition manager, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, is a great alternative to BitLocker for Windows 10 Home, which also runs on other editions of Windows 11/10/8/7 systems. It is welcomed by a number of users because of its remarkable advantages, for example, it works on both internal or external hard drives.
After BitLocker is enabled, you can use other features to manage your encrypted drives better such as resizing or moving encrypted drives, backing up the recovery key, changing the BitLocker passwords, locking or unlocking drives, and turning off BitLocker without any issues. Applying the AES encryption algorithm, AOMEI software will secure the whole process of encrypting.
Step1. 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.)
It only supports encrypting NTFS partitions. Other partition file systems like FAT or FAT32 cannot be encrypted.
Step 3. Please set a password to encrypt the drive and select a way to back up your recovery key. Then, please click the "Next" button to start the encryption process.
If you would like to encrypt your current system drive, you will be required to restart your PC to enter into the Windows PE environment.
Step 4. 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.
As you can see, Windows 10 Home lacks BitLocker functionality. Although a third-party BitLocker tool called AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional plays a key role, you can still protect your files with Windows built-in Device encryption.
Similar to BitLocker, device encryption acts as a protective feature to protect your data from unauthorized access in the unfortunate event that your laptop is lost or stolen. Once activated, the system drives and any secondary drives connected to your device are encrypted and only individuals with the correct password can access the data.
To use the Device encryption feature, please check if your device meets the necessary hardware prerequisites:
◤ Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2 with support for Modern Standby.
◤ TPM must be enabled.
◤ Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware style.
Then, follow the steps below to enable Device encryption on Windows 10 Home:
Step 1. Access the Settings menu.
Step 2. Navigate to “Update & Security”.
Step 3. Select “Device encryption”.
Step 4. Within the "Device encryption" section, locate and click the “Turn on” button.
By completing these steps, Windows 10 will activate encryption for both existing and forthcoming files stored on your computer.
This article discusses whether Windows 10 Home should have BitLocker or not. The conclusion is there is no BitLocker feature in Windows 10 Home edition. To protect your drive data, Windows Home users are suggested to use a third-party locking tool or utilize inbuilt Device encryption.
Of the two BitLocker alternatives mentioned in this post, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional stands out for its versatile features. In addition to BitLocker management, you can also use it to manage your disks and partitions including deleting partitions, formatting partitions, cleaning up space, cloning disks, etc.