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General discussion

Bitlocker key

Jun 13, 2010 12:07AM PDT

I'm looking to protect my laptop's hard drive with bitlocker.

Before I do this I would like some advice on protecting the key.

I aim to store the key on a usb drive but I wondered if it was posible to copy the key onto another usb drive just in case the original gets lost/damaged.

If I protect the usb drive with a password will it be usable to unlock my drive at startup (for example will the login for the usb drive drive appear to enable me to unlock it)?

Discussion is locked

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As far as I know.
Jun 13, 2010 12:17AM PDT

You can do that. At least all is not lost if you lose that key. Example at http://www.lostpassword.com/hdd-decryption.htm

Nice they are now supporting truecrypt as not long ago when folk lost their keys all files would be lost. Except for the ones they had backups for.

Again, all this is very interesting stuff and having watched too many lose all their files you got to wonder why folks keep losing it all.
Bob

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Thanks
Jun 13, 2010 12:40AM PDT

$795 - Ouch!

Thanks for confirming about being able to copy the key. Can I password protect the usb stick though? If I cannot then the key on the usb drive is open to anyone who wants to use it.

I've secured a usb stick with bitlocker and it's set so that I don't need to enter a password when it is plugged into the laptop that created the bitlocker protection on it (if you get what I mean), so would this be OK?

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I'm unsure what the goal is.
Jun 13, 2010 12:49AM PDT

Let's say you lock the usb drive. Since the OS has yet to unlock you can't unlock the usb drive so this looks to be a bad plan.

The usb drive with just the bitlocker key on it is not interesting to anyone or usefull except for this one machine.

Maybe you are overthinking this?
Bob

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I think you might be right
Jun 13, 2010 12:52AM PDT

Good point - I think I have enough information, thank you.