Using BitLocker and Windows 8.1 with Bing
Like many of you, I use USB key drives all the time to move data around from device-to-device or to share data with a colleague. I also use Bit Locker to Go on those drives, especially if they are going to be out of my hands (think UPS or FedEx) to that colleague. As you may know, BitLocker is a file encryption system which allow you to protect your files by encrypting the drive those files reside on. That can be your entire hard disk in your PC, an external disk or a USB drive. So long as you have a Windows 7 or 8 Pro or Enterprise, it can be opened and read just like any other drive.
Paul Thurrott has an excellent overview of Bit Locker on WinSuperSite that I highly recommend reading.
Until today I just assumed that Windows 8.1 with Bing, the low cost version of Windows 8.1 for budget friendly tablets and laptops, could not deal with BitLocker encrypted drives. I figured out however that actually BitLocker and Windows 8.1 with Bing can indeed work together.
For the sake of this article I’m not going to distinguish between BitLocker and BitLocker to Go. The later is fundamentally the same thing as the former, only for portable drives like USB keys.