How to Lock Hard Disk Partitions in Windows 10

By Achilles Hill | Last Updated January 03, 2024

"I'm new to Windows 10 and want to lock my local disk E which is a specialized data partition. Is there any easy but effective way for me to lock the local disk in Windows 10?"

Partition lock can protect your drive data from landing in the wrong hands or being accessed without your authorization, which is extremely useful when there are many sensitive and confidential files saved in the partition. Because of the above mentioned advantage, more and more people choose to encrypt their drives. If you are one of such users, you can pick the favourite way illustrated in this article to lock your hard disk partition in Windows 10.

Tips: Following will take common data drive as the partition example, if you want to lock the C drive in Windows 10, you can refer to this post.

1. Lock Partitions with Windows Inbuilt BitLocker
2. Lock Partitions with BitLocker Genius for Windows

lock hard disk partitions windows 10

1. Lock Partitions with Windows Inbuilt BitLocker

BitLocker is the drive encryption utility you can use in specific editions of Windows without installation, which is no doubt a good choice to lock your hard drive partition. You can find this utility in Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 10. When your Windows 10 version meets the requirement, you can enable BitLocker encryption for your drive with 7 steps here.

Step 1: Open This PC (File Explorer) and right-click the partition you want to lock with BitLocker. Then, select Turn on BitLocker option in the menu.

turn on bitlocker file explorer

Step 2: Choose to unlock your partition with password or smart card and follow its responding instruction. After that, hit Next button to continue.

unlock bitlocker with password or card

Step 3: Select a wanted way to save the recovery key. You can save the recovery key to your Microsoft account, USB flash drive, a file or directly print the recovery key. Just hit Next option after selection.

save recovery key

Step 4: Choose to encrypt the used disk space only or encrypt the entire drive and click Next option.

choose how much of drive to encrypt

Step 5: Check the proper encryption mode: New encryption mode or Compatible mode. To move on, hit Next button.

choose encryption mode

Step 6: Hit Start encrypting to lock your hard drive disk with BitLocker.

click start encrypting

Step 7: Once BitLocker finishes encrypting the partition, it will inform you with a prompt.

encryption is complete

2. Lock Partitions with BitLocker Genius for Windows

BitLocker Genius for Windows is a reliable disk encryption tool that is composed of 5 functions including turning on/off BitLocker for partitions, changing the BitLocker password, locking or unlocking the BitLocker drives. You can apply this smart tool when your Windows 10 OS supports BitLocker but the BitLocker function is not available or you want a simpler way to lock your local disk with BitLocker. So, how to use this tool? Below is the short guide.

Before running the Windows version of BitLocker Genius, please make sure that the .NET Framework version is 4.0 or later on your PC.

Step 1: Run iSunshare BitLocker Genius for Windows on your computer.

Step 2: Locate to the partition you want to lock and right-click it to get Turn on BitLocker option.

turn on bitlocker in bitlocker genius

Step 3: Set a strong BitLocker password whose length must be greater than eight for your partition. After that, click save to file option in the lower left corner and set a safe place to save the recovery key. The place is suggested to be an external hard drive like the USB disk.

set bitlocker password and save key

Step 4: Decide to encrypt the used disk space of the target disk or encrypt the entire partition and then hit Encrypt button to BitLocker encrypt the partition.

select encryption mode and click encrypt