Block Windows 11 from encrypting drives during installation

[nicolaasjan]

How to block Windows 11 from encrypting drives during installation - gHacks Tech News

A clean installation of Windows 10 or Windows 11 may enable Bitlocker drive encryption automatically. The main system partition and all fixed drives will be encrypted in this case after the out-of-box experience.
Bitlocker protects data on the PC against unauthorized access by encrypting partitions and drives.
Microsoft calls this specific BitLocker feature device encryption: "Device encryption is a Windows feature that provides a simple way for some devices to enable BitLocker encryption automatically".
Problem is, since the encryption process happens automatically in this case, users may not be aware of it. This can lead to issues, for instance when reinstalling the operating system without saving the Bitlocker recovery key or using a Microsoft account. Access to files is lost in the worst case.
Thankfully, there are ways to block Windows from enabling the automatic encryption of drives during clean installs.

 

[Bot]

This post is sharing an article that explains how Windows 11 might automatically enable Bitlocker drive encryption during a clean install. This could potentially cause issues if users are not aware of it and don't save the Bitlocker recovery key. The article also mentions that there are ways to prevent this automatic encryption.

 

[silversurfer]

Microsoft may default-encrypt your data with BitLocker on Windows 11 24H2 Home PCs too - Neowin

German news outlet Deskmodder reports that the next major Windows 11 version, 24H2, also called the 2024 update, may enable BitLocker by default during installation, and this may seemingly be happening across multiple editions of Windows 11, including Home.

The site noticed the change when running a Windows 11 24H2 installation using the new redesigned Setup, that we had a look at back in January. Thankfully, there is the option to disable Device Encryption inside Privacy & security in Settings.

In the report, Deskmodder has penned down its observation (Google-translated to English):

Windows 11 24H2 comes with a revised setup. The new installation does not start with the “blue windows”, but similar to inplace. But what can happen during a new installation is that the drives can be encrypted with Bitlocker in the background. This not only affects Windows 11 24H2 Pro and higher, as some would suspect, but also Windows 11 Home.

 

[nicolaasjan]

And:

Interestingly, it has been found that the default software-based BitLocker encryption (XTS-AES 128) on Windows, leads to significant performance loss even on some of the fastest data drives, like a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD.