Windows 11 encrypts your SSD or HDD with Bitlocker 24/7 without prior notice.

Windows 11 was released in October 2021 and has been receiving constant updates from Microsoft ever since. Although it is the company’s most popular operating system today, the truth is that it is not as popular as expected and Windows 10 is still the most used. Despite this, at the end of the day, Windows 11 is the only system that brings new features, and many of them are expected in the latest version. Windows 11 24H2 will bring new features and functionality, although some of them seem to cause headaches, such as the fact that drives SSD and HDD will be encrypted using Bitlocker automatically without warning.

When Windows 11 launched, it didn’t look much different from Windows 10. On an aesthetic and design level, it was a bit more modern, and what we noticed most was the simplification of some of its features. For example, when we right-clicked in File Explorer, several options appeared instead of the entire list as in Windows 10. This was also observed.
simplification

in options
operating system. Besides, overall everything was very similar.

Windows 11 automatically encrypts SSD and HDD drives using Bitlocker 24 hours a day

Windows 11 started to stand out the most in the features and capabilities that were added over time. We started to see Microsoft putting a lot more pressure on Using AI in your operating system. A demo was shown of how simple applications such as Paint will now be able to use artificial intelligence. It’s the same with the typical photo/image application that comes with Windows, since with it we can even remove background from photos where we want to isolate people or animals.

We can’t ignore the addition
Second pilot, a new artificial intelligence assistant that replaced Cortana, which did not have a good reputation. With Windows 11 24H2, these AI features are expected to come to apps, changes to the file explorer, and in addition, a change has now been announced that will not be received very well. It turns out that Windows 11 24H2 automatically encrypts drives by default

, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a primary SSD or a secondary hard drive. This causes a number of problems for users, starting with the fact that Microsoft doesn’t warn about encryption, and those who don’t know may get bad news when they see it. they don’t have the decryption key if they reinstall Windows and lose their data.

If we want to remove encryption from the drives, we will have to edit the registry.

Another negative aspect of Bitlocker active encryption is loss of productivity up to 45%. We could see this in tests conducted a few months ago on the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD, where performance dropped the most in the write tests. In the test reading was reduced by
26% and when transferring files, the speed dropped by 11%. Although Bitlocker encryption was found to be added by default in Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft actually started doing this starting with Insider Build 25905 in July 2023.

Regardless, it won’t be officially implemented until the next major Windows update, so it might be helpful for you to write down what to do when installing 24H2. The first thing you need to do is click Shift+F10

when we start installing Windows, right on the country selection tab. From there we can type regedit to enter the Registry Editor. Once inside, we will go to:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\BitLocker
and right-click BitLocker. We will choose New-32 bit hexadecimal and value
1, as well as changing the name to “PreventDeviceEncryption”. If we don’t want to do all this manually, we can use software like Rufus and select the option to disable automatic encryption.