Windows Help & Advice - UK (2020-03)

Aftersettingup,

mountyour

encrypteddrives

foraccess.

encrypt the Windows partition, or the
entire drive (so all partitions on the
primary hard drive). If in doubt, encrypt
the system partition only – you may get
a warning when attempting to encrypt
the entire drive about losing access if it
has a so-called ‘inappropriately
designed’ BIOS.
The next step informs VeraCrypt
whether you have a single-boot or
multiboot system, and then it’s a similar
process as for creating an encrypted
virtual drive.
There’s just one caveat: you can only
protect your system drive with a strong
password; key files aren’t supported.
You also need to create rescue media

• don’t skip this step, because it’s
  required to both permanently decrypt
  your drive and provide protection
  against corruption.
  Different media is required
  depending on whether your boot
  mode is EFI (USB flash drive) or MBR
  (CD/DVD) – just follow the prompts
  to create and verify the media. The
  recovery media is tied to your specific
  PC and the current password you’ve
  assigned to your boot drive. If you
  make any hardware changes, you need
  to recreate it.
  You next see the Wipe Mode screen,
  which enables you to securely overwrite
  the unencrypted copies of your files
  after they’ve been encrypted – the
  more passes, the slower the process, so
  unless you have reason to be truly
  paranoid, none or just ‘1-pass’ should
  be sufficient.

7HVW DQG HQFU\SW

You’renowreadyforthedrivetobe

encrypted– first,a pretestisrunto

verifyeverythingworksasit should

do.YourPCreboots,andyou’re

promptedtoenterthepasswordyou

justsetup.Whenpromptedforthe

PIM,justpressEnterunlessyou

manuallyspecifiedthisvalue.Waitfor

thepasswordtobeverified– then

Windowsbootsasnormal.

If thetestpasses,clicktheEncrypt

buttonandVeraCryptstartstoencrypt

yourdrive’scontents(aDeferbutton

isalsopresentif youwishtobackup

datafirst– you’rethenpromptedagain

thenexttimeWindowsisrestarted).

Unlikewithencryptingnon-system

volumes,youcancarryonusingyour

PCwhilethedriveisencrypted.Once

complete,yourcomputer’scontents

areprotectedagainsttheftandother

threats,ensuringanydatastoredon

thedriveissecure.

(QFU\SW HQWLUH GULYHV

VeraCryptcanalsobeusedtoencrypt

otherdrivesandpartitions,frominternal

datadrivestoUSBthumbdrives.Aswith

allmajoroperations,westrongly

recommendyoufirsttakea fullimage

ofyourharddrivebeforestarting

theprocess– justincase.Oncethedrive

issafelyencrypted,youcansafely

You need to balance security versus performance when picking an algorithm.

Windows 10

Protect your data

March 2020 | |^53