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If Device encryption isn’t available in your PC running Windows 11 Home, these options to encrypt your data or even your entire hard drive may help. Alternative Ways to Encrypt Data on Windows 11 Home It could be another drive, but the C: drive is usually where the operating system and important apps and files are stored.Īgain, if you don’t see this option, it means device encryption is not working on your computer. Open “My Computer,” and if you see an unlock icon on the C: drive, the drive is encrypted. There are a few ways to find out whether encryption is working on your Windows 11 Home computer. How to Know If Device Encryption Is Missing on Your Windows 11 Home Even if Modern Standby is missing, sleep mode will work perfectly on your computer – it just won’t be able to encrypt data, and wake-up times will be slightly longer. Sleep mode puts your computer to sleep, while Modern Standby keeps certain processes running to improve wake-up times. They are two separate features with two separate, albeit related, jobs. Note that Modern Standby is not the same as sleep mode. It is not clear why yet, but the bug only affects some Windows 11 Home computers.

Basically, it’s a bug, one that prevents your Windows 11 Home computer from encrypting data when the computer is in sleep mode, hibernation, locked, idle, or shut down. When this happens, the Device Encryption option is also missing since the two are connected. So what’s the problem?Īs it turns out, Modern Standby is missing on some Windows 11 Home computers. Modern Standby is directly linked to the device encryption feature in Windows 11 Home. To access these processes and programs, Modern Standby needs to decrypt data that is encrypted automatically in sleep mode. It keeps certain processes and programs running in the background when a PC is in sleep mode. This results in longer wake times, so Microsoft added Modern Standby. To encrypt data in Windows 11 Home, Microsoft uses BitLocker – but not the full version with the advanced features, as that’s reserved for Windows 11 Pro. When the computer enters sleep mode, it is locked and encrypted.

This eliminates the need to boot from scratch. Sleep mode, when enabled, allows users to wake up their computer quickly. In order to understand why Device Encryption is missing for some users, we first need to dig in to sleep mode and Modern Standby.

Why Is Device Encryption Missing In Windows 11 Home?

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