What is it?

BitLocker is a feature of Windows that allows you to encrypt your hard drives or removable media, such as USB flash drives, to protect your data from unauthorized access. BitLocker uses a key protector to encrypt the volume encryption key, which in turn encrypts the data on the volume. There are different types of key protectors, such as TPM (Trusted Platform Module), password, recovery password, startup key, PIN and more.

PowerShell is a powerful scripting language that can help you automate tasks and manage systems. You can use PowerShell to interact with BitLocker and perform various operations, such as enabling or disabling encryption, adding or removing key protectors, checking encryption status and more.

In this blog post, we will show you how to use PowerShell and BitLocker for drive encryption. We will assume that you have PowerShell installed on your computer and that you have administrator privileges.

Enabling BitLocker Encryption

To enable BitLocker encryption for a volume, you need to use the Enable-BitLocker cmdlet from the BitLocker module. This cmdlet requires a volume identifier (such as a drive letter or a BitLocker volume object) and a key protector type. You can also specify other parameters, such as encryption method (AES 128-bit or AES 256-bit), hardware encryption (if supported by your device), used space only (to encrypt only the used space on the volume) and more.

For example, to enable BitLocker encryption for drive C: using TPM as the key protector, you can use this command:

Enable-Bitlocker -MountPoint C: -TpmProtector

This command will start the encryption process in the background and return an object with information about the encrypted volume.

To enable BitLocker encryption for drive D: using password as the key protector, you can use this command:

$Password = Read-Host -AsSecureString "Enter password"
Enable-Bitlocker -MountPoint D: -PasswordProtector -Password $Password

This command will prompt you to enter a password and then start the encryption process in the background.

To enable BitLocker encryption for drive E: using recovery password as the key protector, you can use this command:

$RecoveryPassword = Get-BitlockerVolume -MountPoint E: | Add-BitlockerKeyProtector -RecoveryPasswordProtector | Select-Object -ExpandProperty KeyProtector | Where-Object {$_.KeyProtectorType -eq "RecoveryPassword"} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty RecoveryPassword
Enable-Bitlocker -MountPoint E: -RecoveryPasswordProtector -RecoveryPassword $RecoveryPassword

This command will generate a random 48-digit recovery password using `Add-BitlockerKeyProtector` cmdlet and then use it to enable encryption.

You can also combine multiple key protectors for added security. For example, to enable BitLocker encryption for drive F: using TPM and PIN as the key protectors, you can use this command:

$Pin = Read-Host -AsSecureString "Enter PIN"
Enable-Bitlocker -MountPoint F: -TpmAndPinProtector -Pin $Pin

This command will prompt you to enter a PIN (4-20 digits) and then start the encryption process in the background.

Checking Encryption Status

To check the status of BitLocker encryption for one or more volumes, you can use `Get-BitlockerVolume` cmdlet from `Bitlocker` module. This cmdlet returns an object with information about each encrypted volume,
such as mount point, size, protection status (on or off), lock status (locked or unlocked), percentage encrypted (0-100) and more.

For example, to check the status of all encrypted volumes on your computer,
you can use this command:

Get-BitlockerVolume