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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

Just use Bitlocker . Despite being proprietary, it has withstood court challenges, indicating no backdoor and much easier and reliable than having to deal with utfi, firmware, compatibility, and secure boot settings and other issues that may arise with VeraCrypt when trying to encrypt the entire drive. Microsoft makes it idiot proof to encrypt the drive. This is one of the few instances in which the closed source option is better than open source.

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As far as I see bitlocker isn’t available for windows 10 home edition. Unless there is something I am missing. That is why I recently started looking at Veracrypt.

It's certainly on Windows 11 Home edition, but it isn't called Bitlocker and has a less powerful GUI than the Pro version.

Only on supported hardware and your key is automatically stored by Microsoft(but can be deleted)

Last part only if you don’t use the CLI.

then buy pro. If the data is important enough, $100 is trivial.

Bitlocker is Windows-only

You could use dislocker on Linux.

if the data is important enough just buy a laptop for bitlocker only and then disconnect from the internet after installing it.

Bitlocker requires an internet connection and Windows account. Your backup key is sent to a microsoft server. Some people would object to the government being able to request your key from a server to search your encrypted files. That's exactly what the government wants to happen.

This is wrong. You can set it up with the command line tool which neither sends your key nor do you need an account.

Bitlocker requires a Professional or greater license of Windows, but needs neither an internet connection nor a Microsoft account.

I have mine setup with TPM + PIN, and have archived the recovery keys myself, not stored them with Microsoft.

I don't get it. my comment got heavily downvoted yet the objection to my comment is wrong and also downvoted. So ...I guess people don't like closed source, period.

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