It is one of the safest ways to protect your drives from unwanted people or intruders. Bitlocker encryption secures your hard disk drive(HDD), both internal or external and the USB memory drive by encrypting them. That means it encodes your information so that hackers cannot get into it. This helps to keep your sensitive and important information safe within your drives.
There is some little disadvantages in having bitlocker turn on in your system. It prevents you from accessing your information if you forgot the password. Another thing, it also prevents you from accessing the drives in a dual boot system. It means you have to keep switching the system off and on to access information from different OS environments.
Nonetheless, the advantage to protect your data outweigh the disadvantages. If you are willing to turn it off for one reason or the other in Windows 8, this step-by-step instruction is meant for you.
Image showing how to get Settings in Windows 8
STEP 1: Move your mouse cursor to the extreme right edge of your screen.
Image pointing to Settings in Windows 8
STEP 2: From the slide that appears from right-hand side click 'Settings'. to continue.
Image of Settings in Windows 8
STEP 3: At the 'Settings' slide-screen click 'Control panel'.
Image showing arrow at search-bar at Control panel in Windows 8
STEP 4: Click the little arrow at the tip of search-bar at the 'Control Panel' and select 'All control panel items'.
Image showing Bitlocker Driver Encryption at Control Panel in Windows 8
STEP 5: Next click 'Bitlocker Drive Encryption' to move on to the next process.
Image of Bitlocker Drive Encryption in Windows 8
STEP 6: Click on 'New Volume ((E:) or other driver letter) Bitlocker On' under 'Removable data drives - Bitlocker To Go' and click 'Turn off Bitlocker'. Note that your Operating System Driver, usually drive C cannot be encrypted by Bitlocker.
Image of Bitlocker decrypting process in Windows 8
STEP 7: Wait for Bitlocker Driver Encryption to start decrypting your drive.
Image of Bitlocker successful decryption in Windows 8
STEP 8: Click 'Close' when the decrypting process is complete .