encryption

I have recently updated my laptop from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro and previously used TrueCrypt to encrypt my laptop drive but on this occasion I thought I'd give Bitlocker a try instead as this is now available with the Windows 8.1 Pro version.  Normally you would use Bitlocker with TPM (Trusted Platform Module) but I didn't have TPM installed in my laptop but I still wanted to use it.  As I discovered there is a way around this by using either a PIN or USB drive as a pre-authentication method.  I also discovered that the default encryption algorithm used is…