Q. Can I read BitLocker protected removable media on Windows XP and Windows Vista machines?

A. Microsoft has released BitLocker To Go Reader (BTGR). Windows XP and Windows Vista. Once BTGR is installed, you can use it to read from BitLocker protected media.

You don't have to worry about downloading and installing BTGR. When a drive is protected with BitLocker, an additional “discovery volume” that contains BTGR is created on the device. When the media is inserted in an XP or Vista system that doesn't have BTGR installed, the device will appear to contain nothing but the BTGR installation files. You can use these to install BTGR from the device, and then access the device's real content.

Note that you have to use the BTGR interface to view the content—you can't view it from Explorer or any other part of the Windows OS. If you try to view a BitLocker protected drive in Explorer, you'll only see a link to BTGR, as shown.

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