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Use Bitlocker or not?

ximoosea

Member
Just curious how many people choose to use bitlocker or not. The SP3 could easily be stolen but with it such a closed up system, I would assume most thieves would be more interested in reformating the harddrive versus trying to tear up the SP3 and extract the harddrive to read the data. Thus, is a Windows password secure enough to prevent this scenario?

I have read that Bitlocker does not have a noticeable performance hit, thus, are are any good reasons not to use it? Does it play well with most software?

Thanks.
 

unruledboy

Active Member

unruledboy

Active Member
AnandTech | Hardware Accelerated BitLocker Encryption: Microsoft Windows 8 eDrive Investigated with Crucial M500
AnandTech | Hardware Accelerated BitLocker Encryption: Microsoft Windows 8 eDrive Investigated with Crucial M500

PCMark 7 - Raw System Storage Score
Unencrypted BitLocker Enabled Perf Impact
Crucial M500 240GB (eDrive) 4644 4586 -1.2%
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB 6195 5336 -13.9%


Peak Performance - 4KB Random Write (8GB LBA Space, QD32)
Unencrypted BitLocker Enabled Perf Impact
Crucial M500 240GB (eDrive) 63334.8 IOPS 62865.8 IOPS -0.7%
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB 88911.3 IOPS 63097.53 IOPS -29.0%
 

kevinlevrone

Active Member
You can use BitLocker only on a subset of all your data.

For example, I have 3 partitions: one for system, one for work information and one for personal stuff. Only the work partition is bitlocker-enabled because it contains confidential information. This way BitLocker does not slow down the system at all, while still providing protection on the data that needs protection. I don't care if anyone gains access to my pictures, but I do care if someone steals the confidential work information.
 

diamond.g

New Member
My SP3 came with bitlocker turned on by default (on the c drive). I think my ATIV 500T did as well. The performance hit isn't as noticeable for light duty stuff. Though I imagine if you did things that wrote tones of data to disk, you would want to turn it off.
 
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ximoosea

Member
Thanks all. I was not sure if it came enabled by default or not so it is nice that Diamond.g has confirmed that his did. Also I like Kevin's suggestion to partition and just enable Bitlocker with the data partition.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
On any Connected Standby enabled machine it is required that Bitlocker be enabled OOB, the Recovery Key is stored online in your Microsoft Account unless it a Domain Joined Machine and the domain is configured to store the recovery key in Active Directory.
 

puma

Member
I use it, I don't notice any performance hit. I am surprised by what unruledboy posted, those numbers point to a lot of overhead.
 

null4end

Member
I use BitLocker on mine (company requirement) and it is totally seamless. If there is any sort of performance hit, it is imperceptible in daily use.
 

Sit

Member
I use bitlocker on external usb hard drives. Thought being if they got stolen, at least the data encrypted.

Interesting specs from unruledboy on degradation due to bitlocker.
 
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