Seriously, WTF? I rebooted. Logged in, and there's some notification asking me to backup the key because it is encrypting my file system. I didn't ask it to do that, and I wasn't even logged in as ...

But before you add encrypted files to the index, it is recommended that you have Windows BitLocker, or a non-Microsoft encryption program, enabled on your system drive for security purposes.

Laptops, external drives, and USB sticks are especially vulnerable to data theft, but with Windows and a few tools, you can protect them using encryption.

Learn how to enable or disable Automatic Encryption of files moved to Encrypted folders using Registry or Group Policy on Windows 11/10.

When you are done, don’t forget to unmount the encrypted folder to be protected again. On Windows In contrast to Mac operating system, Windows lacks features to encrypt or password protect files.

Windows 7 and Windows Vista’s Ultimate and Enterprise editions include a feature called BitLocker that can encrypt whole hard drives, right down to the system files and password caches.

Microsoft seems to be trying to move to a new file system with ReFS, but can it actually replace NTFS in Windows? Probably not yet.