BitLocker locked my external harddrive by itself?!

Anonymous
2014-10-11T23:49:51+00:00

Hi,

Today I connected my external harddrive to my PC and it popped-up this message saying the drive is locked by bitlocker.

This has never happend before on the same PC.

I had no clue wat bitlocker was, so I looked it up and I start to believe that I will never be able to acces my drive again because:

I have no recovery key or password because I have never been in contact with bitlocker in my life untill now.

I searched on every drive inside and outside my PC for it and my microsoft account tells me I have 0 keys stored. 

So, what can I do? This disk contains data I need, so formatting is not an option.

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Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-12-24T15:03:12+00:00

    This has happened to me twice with Windows 10 Pro. One was abrand new Dell Vostro which was supplied by Dell with Bitlocker on.

    However it should always ask before encrypting any new drive connected. It did not. It also should attempt to give you a key whenever it first applies bitlocker. It did not do this either.

    I was able to unscramble this one by plugging it in to the offending Dell, turning off bitlocker and waiting a long time for it to finish the process. 

    If you are on the correct PC (the one that locked it) surely there should be an easy to find option to turn bitlocker off for an external drive. I couldn't find it and the owner neither wanted or knew that the main drive had been encrypted so just removed the encryption from everything.

    The second drive that has been encrypted also happened without warning and I have been unable to track down the offending PC so have now lost the contents of the drive.

    This totally unacceptable. External drives and flash drives are regularly used to move data around so Bitlocking them without prompting can never be acceptable.

    This needs fixing immediately.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-10-23T21:23:04+00:00

    Hi,

    We found a thread with a similar issue. Click this link and see if it helps.

    Let us know how it goes.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-10-20T18:58:36+00:00

    Bitlocker locked my external USB Hard drive by itself. All I did was disconnect my hard drive from my computer and relocate to another room. When I hooked back up, the hard drive was locked.

    I've read several stories this has happened, but MS keeps saying it can't enabled itself. Well, it did, and I have a lot of person info my drive I can't get.

    Someone needs a real solution for this issue.

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    4 people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-12T08:45:57+00:00

    >Let us know if this works and resolves the problem.

    No, it will not and does not work in my case because it appeared with and old laptop using win7. Bitlocker has never been used in any of my computers or the external hard drive.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T22:33:46+00:00

    Hi,

    You could try a Refresh, hopefully that could resolve the issue.

    Make sure your Surface is plugged in (not running on battery).

    1. Turn off the Surface by holding power for 6-10 seconds
    2. Tap the power button to turn it back on.
    3. Once the Surface logo appears, wait for circling dots to appear and then hold power for 6-10 seconds to turn device off again.
    4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until the Surface logo appears with words underneath saying “Preparing Automatic Repair”
    5. Recovery mode will start.
    6. At the Bitlocker screen, tap “skip this drive”
    7. Tap Advanced options
    8. Tap Troubleshoot
    9. Tap Refresh. This will take a while to run and complete.

    Let us know if this works and resolves the problem.

    Regards,

    Angelo Bar

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