[Resolved] How to encrypt Boot Camp partition with BitLocker in macOS & Mac OS X?

Updated on July 29, 2023 by Admin to BitLocker for Mac

What is Boot Camp partition? If you are a Mac computer user, you may have heard of Boot Camp Assistant, a utility developed by Apple to help users install and run Windows on a Mac computer. When installing Windows on Mac computer via Boot Camp Assistant, the Boot Camp Assistant downloads the necessary support software, creates a partition on your disk for Windows, and then starts the Windows Installer. The partition created by Boot Camp Assistant for Windows during this process is called the Boot Camp partition, it is an NTFS partition.

Why use BitLocker to encrypt Boot Camp partition on Mac?We know that on Mac computers, users usually use FileVault to encrypt partitions to protect our data, but FileVault is only available to encrypt HFS and APFS partitions, it cannot be used to encrypt NTFS partitions, so we cannot use FileVault to encrypt a Boot Camp partition. Perhaps other third-party software under the Mac supports encryption of the NTFS partition, but encrypting the Boot Camp partition may cause Windows to fail to start properly, so we must carefully choose the encryption software. Here we recommend that you choose BitLocker to encrypt the Boot Camp partition. BitLocker Drive Encryption is the built-in disk encryption feature of Windows 10/8/7, so it will not cause Windows to fail to start.

The best software to encrypt Boot Camp partition with BitLocker on Mac. If you decide to use BitLocker encryption Boot Camp partition, you need to find a BitLocker encryption program that can run under Mac. Here we recommend that you choose Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere For Mac, which is the most powerful Mac BitLocker solution on the market, and below we will show how to use it to encrypt the Boot Camp partition on Mac.

tips Tips:

  • Terminating the program, removing the drive or abnormal power off during encryption will result in data corruption, so it is recommended that you back up the files on the volume you want to encrypt before encrypting it.
  • Please keep the BitLocker password in mind and back up the BitLocker recovery key safely, losing both of them will cause the data to be inaccessible.

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Tutorial to encrypt Boot Camp partition with BitLocker in macOS & Mac OS X.

Step 1. Download, install and run Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere For Mac.

Step 2. Right-click the Boot Camp partition in main window, then click "Turn On BitLocker".

select the drive to encrypt

 

Step 3. In this step, you are required to specify a password for encrypting the drive, enter the password and click "Next". You should choose a password having a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, spaces, and special symbols. Once the encryption is complete, you can access the drive using this password.

enter encrypt password

  • Encrypt used disk space only: Allows you to encrypt only the disk space that is currently used by the drive file system, unused space will remain unencrypted, this option can help you save time spent on encryption. After you encrypt a drive with this option, all files that you added to the drive are automatically encrypted.
  • Compatible mode: If a drive that you plan to encrypt needs to be used on Windows operating systems prior to Windows 10 Version 1511, you should choose compatible mode. Windows 10 Version 1511 introduces a new disk encryption mode (XTS-AES) that is not compatible with older versions of Windows, the compatible mode (AES-CBC) is full compatible with older versions of Windows.
  • Use 256-bit encryption: Bitlocker supports 128-bit and 256-bit encryption strength. The 256-bit encryption is more secure but will take up more CPU resources, so you should choose different encryption strengths according to your needs. Please tick this checkbox if you want to use 256 encryption strength.

 

Step 4. Back up BitLocker recovery key, then click “Next” to move on. You can save the recovery key to a file or print a copy of it. Please note that anyone can use the recovery key to gain access to the drive, even if they do not know the password entered in the previous step, so please do not disclose it to others.

back up bitlocker recovery key

 

Step 5. Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere For Mac will now encrypt the contents of the selected drive using BitLocker drive encryption. The encryption process could take a long time to finish depending on the size of the drive, so please be patient to wait. If you don't want to wait until the encryption operation is finished, "Shut down the computer when the operation is completed" option is a good idea. Just check it.

encrypting drive with bitlocker

 

Step 6. After the encryption is complete, click the "Finish" button to return to the main window.

encryption is complete
 

As mentioned above, Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere For Mac is the best software you can use it to encrypt Boot Camp partition with BitLocker on Mac. If you want to encrypt the Boot Camp partition under Windows, please refer to: How to encrypt Boot Camp partition with BitLocker in Windows?

 

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