If you have a BitLocker encrypted drive, then you have to enter the password each time you want to unlock it and access it contents. But this is very uncomfortable to enter the password each time you attach it to your computer, especially if you use a drive too often. Windows 8 presents a solution to this problem by allowing you to automatically unlock a BitLocker protected drive whenever you attach it to your PC. Here is how you can set a BitLocker drive to be automatically unlocked in Windows 8:
- Open Windows Explorer using the hotkey Win + E. Right-click on the target disk drive in Windows Explorer and select Unlock Drive. Enter your password and unlock the drive.
- Once your protected drive is unlocked, right-click on the target disk drive in Windows Explorer and select Manage BitLocker.
- This would open the BitLocker Management window where you can access various BitLocker related options for all the disk drives on your computer. For the selected protected drive, click on the Turn on auto-unlock as shown in the following picture.
- That’s it. From now on whenever you attach this BitLocker protected disk drive to this PC, it will be automatically unlocked. This setting is user and PC specific and would work only for the currently logged in user on that computer.