Encryption on External Hard Drives - Help!!

Hi Everyone

I've just bought a 2TB Seagate Backup Slim Plus external hard drive. This will be for backing up data including some information I want to keep secure. I travel a lot and will be taking and using the drive in various public locations. I've just read that this drive does not have any security encryption like the Western Digital Passport plus series which has 256 bit encryption. I was under the impression that I could encrypt files on the Seagate using bitlocker or similar. Will this be as effective as the Western Digital encryption or should I return the Seagate and swap for the Passport plus hard drive?

Cheers for any help or advice.

Seems like using bitlocker means that I can only use the external hard drive on one pc - no good for me then..

I have two bitlocker external drives. After the encryption is finished it can be used on other devices, mine was encrypted on my 10 pro desktop but still works on my sisters 7 Home Premium laptop. You plug it in and it asks for the password.

Performance is affected but it's essentially negligible.

Disco_P said:

I have two bitlocker external drives. After the encryption is finished it can be used on other devices, mine was encrypted on my 10 pro desktop but still works on my sisters 7 Home Premium laptop. You plug it in and it asks for the password.

Performance is affected but it's essentially negligible.

Click to expand...

Ah, that's good to know. Haven't used bitlocker much but would it be easy to encrypt a whole drive?

Bitlocker is probably your best choice.

I've not used it on an external drive, but have created some encrypted VHD's that have been shared across multiple devices without any issue.

I also use bitlocker for my external drives as I use them for rotating backups. I believe external bitlocker drives can be read/written to from any edition of Windows from 7 onwards, but that you can only create encrypted drives on non home editions of Windows

Encrypting the drive is very straightforward, and if you do this before storing any files on it is also quite fast. You can also encrypt with data in place, it just takes longer.

If that doesn't work for you, try Veracrypt volume encryption.

I thought it prudent to use Bitlocker on a 500gb external drive with data on it. Clucking Bell! I wish I hadn't bothered. It takes DAYS!

Fogold said:

I thought it prudent to use Bitlocker on a 500gb external drive with data on it. Clucking Bell! I wish I hadn't bothered. It takes DAYS!

Click to expand...

How is your drive connected? That doesn't sound right tbh.

I've just got a brand new 2Tb USB3 drive for work, already dumped some data on it, and then decided to encrypt. I reckon it took about 8-10 hours for the entire drive.

Its at 87.3% in 24 hours. It IS going up. Its an IOMEGA USB3 drive and is about 75% full. I want to give up but not sure if it will screw the drive up.

Fogold said:

Its at 87.3% in 24 hours. It IS going up. Its an IOMEGA USB3 drive and is about 75% full. I want to give up but not sure if it will screw the drive up.

Click to expand...

I take it you have a backup of this data handy?

If not, it's a very risky action to perform. Power loss = death

Stay away from Western Digital as it uses hardware encryption. Meaning if your enclosure fails you've lost all your data. It needs the original enclosure to decrypt the drive.

Unwound the crypt in 2 hours. Back to normal. The drive is backups and I have three backup locations so if it dies no biggie.