Mike Meyers' Guide to Supporting Windows 7 for CompTIA A+ Certification (Exams 701 & 702)

BitLocker Drive Encryption

Microsoft introduced the powerful BitLocker Drive Encryption tool with Windows Vista and refined it in Windows 7. To use BitLocker to encrypt your hard drives, you need two things: a motherboard with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip and at least two partitions.

TPM provides a fixed encryption key on a chip. You can use this key in a number of ways. You can associate hardware to a specific motherboard, creating a way to authenticate hardware with a particular motherboard. You can also use the key for encryption using BitLocker. Figure 7-3 shows a typical TPM chip on a modern motherboard.

I need to come clean on one issue. Although the CompTIA A+ exams may tell you that you need a TPM chip, Windows 7 enables you to ...