Can Bitlocker be used to encyrpt a drive WITHOUT deleting/reformatting it?

[dekw04]

Hi everyone.

Can anyone tell me if Bitlocker can be used to encrypt a drive (such as an external hard drive or SD card) without deleting/reformatting it?

I want to encrypt some of my drives and password protect them, but so far I've been confused when it comes to actually doing it. I'm not sure if I would absolutely have to reformat the drive before I would be allowed to encrypt it regardless of the encryption program I used.

Anyway, I thought that maybe Bitlocker could be used to encrypt a drive like an external hard drive or an SD card without having to reformat it. If so using Bitlocker would save a lot of time.

Am I mistaken about this? Can Bitlocker be used to encrypt a drive (e.g. external hard drive, SD card, etc.) without having to delete/reformat it?

Thank you.

 

[Rumbletum]

Good qustion to which I don't know the answer, but read this link it may help a bit

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3804969/bitlocker-hardware-encryption-complete-data-destruction.html

 

[the great randini]

yes
just be sure to save the key in a safe place


Heads up: you may have to decrypt the drive when the big version updates for windows 10 come out, they required it in the past.