BitLocker - opinions?

Reprise

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I recently installed Win 10 Pro, in the hopes of killing that b!tch named Cortana -- and she STILL won't die. No matter.

With Pro, you get access to BitLocker drive encryption. Any opinions yea / nay?

Especially interested in hearing if your machine ran slower after encryption (yes, I still have memories of MS' drive compression (guessing our WWW thread sparked that, eh?))
 

djthumper

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Nov 20, 2011
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North Las Vegas
It is easy to hide Cortana but she won't die. We had issues with using bitlocker when we were doing some testing and it impaired some of our applications.
 
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Reprise

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I hate to ask, but will....

By 'we', do you mean at your job, this website...or even both?
 

Mooseman

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Dec 4, 2011
25,262
Ottawa, ON
I have Pro 10 and was able to banish Cortana. Turned it off and hide the search from the bar. She hasn't bothered me since.
 

Reprise

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I just removed the 'search' box (had turned off Cortana previously). Let's see if that works (and if it does, my sincere thanks in advance!)
 

djthumper

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Nov 20, 2011
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At my job, I do support for almost 2000 systems Plus we have about 350 laptops deployed.
 
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Martyelzz4

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Jan 3, 2013
67
Sprague, WA
I got rid of Cortana on my multiple computer's but on my windows 10 phone... "it" keeps coming back... stupid AI does not even understand plain English.. Like .. shut the F**** up! Microsoft has no sense of humor when you suggest several phrases that should be recognized.
 

gpking

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Dec 27, 2013
534
Berkeley Springs, WV
With Pro, you get access to BitLocker drive encryption. Any opinions yea / nay?
I work in IT (specifically I provision custom machines) and the government requires FIPS-compliant (aka the worst/slowest) BitLocker on our systems. We spec our equipment pretty well with at least a 7th gen i5 and an SSD, but BitLocker produces no noticeable performance hit on our new systems.

If you get granular, you will see that r/w speeds are definitely slowed, but that will not be noticed by your average user. Now, if you're working with an HDD as your main drive, I'm not sure how noticeable it would be.

When I go to encrypt a new system with a 1TB HDD, it's a set it and check on it tomorrow type deal. It takes quite a few hours to initially encrypt.
The 1TB SSDs are quicker, but I can't recall last time I did one.

Unless you're doing high-end gaming, or your computer is already slow as dirt, I see no reason not to enable it if you have sensitive data on your machine. It's just an extra layer of security.

Note that it is highly desired that your system has a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) to use BitLocker. Otherwise you need to futz with USB drives or passwords at boot to make it work.
Run TPM.msc to quickly check if you have a TPM. You may need to enable the TPM in the BIOS. Even if you don't have one, you can buy it and install it in most OEM systems.
 
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Reprise

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Thanks - that is good info. Machine in question is a laptop, and it does have TPM v2. Given that, I think I'll enable the encryption.
 
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djthumper

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Nov 20, 2011
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North Las Vegas
I am not saying it is a bad thing but good luck. We do encrypt a partition on our drive due to the nature of things on our laptops for the water lines throughout the valley.
 
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DocBrown

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Dec 8, 2011
501
I also work in IT. Worked for a bank for 9 years, they got bought out, I now work for manufacturing. In banking encryption is required for laptops and many desktops for certain functions. Where I work now we are a global company with offices and plants in Europe. In Europe, GDPR requires encryption on laptops.

That said in the thousands of machines I know of with Bitlocker, I have not seen any issues with performance or otherwise. Programs that have issues with it will have issues with any encryption algorithm.
 

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