BitLocker taking forever to encrypt whole drive.

[Ajfer03]

Hey everyone, I have a Dell Inspiron 5555  with a One Terabyte HDD and I upgraded to windows 10 Professional because I knew about BitLocker and wanted to use it because I take my privacy seriously. So, today I only went to school for a half a day, so I started the process at around 10:30 AM and then went to school and went through a Driver's Ed class. So I came home at around 7:00 PM. I knew that encrypting the full drive would be the best option as it is not a new installation. So, I thought that at the minimum it would be at 75 percent complete because of the size of the drive and it being a smaller form factor.

But I checked it, and was only at 26 percent!

Now, I set my computer to stay on while plugged in and to not go to sleep or display the lock screen, so there could be no chance of the drive sleeping. Forgive me if I'm wrong but it should not be taking this long. Is there something I am doing wrong? (That rhymes!)

Thanks for any advice, as it will eventually complete, but I just want an explanation. Thanks!

By the way, only about 80 gigs are being used currently, so that shouldn't have an effect either.

[Geek-9pm]

I have never used Bit locker.
Does the documentation have any information about how long it takes?

Here is what I would do if I ever wanted to use Bit locker.
I would decide the drive into partitions.
I would use bit Locker on each partition, one at a time.
Does that seem reasonable?

Here is a link:

Encryption Takes a Long Time.

[Ajfer03]

Thanks geek, but I prefer just one main partition, but thanks for the reply, it has since moved up slightly. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Windows wants to leave the computer usable, and since my drive is slower, it needs to give more data control to the user than something like an SSD.

Makes Sense!

[Lisa_maree]

If this is taking this long imagine what it is going to be like using the laptop.
Expect windows to take 8 or more minutes to boot, opening programs is going to be so slow.
I wonder if you considered using a hard drive password instead?. Which wouldn't have any effect on the load times.
Now you have started you will need to just leave it for a few days to finish and then maybe remove bit locker. The good news is it is faster to remove than to do the encryption.     

[Ajfer03]

Lisa, I think I will be alright. I would rather have my data better secured with actual encryption that is way harder to break than a hard drive password.

Thanks for the reply!

[BC_Programmer]

Another consideration regarding encryption though perhaps not helpful for your original problem- I personally use an encrypted drive via VeraCrypt for data I wish to remain secured. It basically creates a large file that you can mount using the Veracrypt software. Even with Bitlocker it can be useful, as you could use it on an external or flash drive and move it to other systems, where you can mount it via the VeraCrypt software as well.