BitLocker locked my external harddrive by itself?!

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Communities.

As I understand that you are unable to access your external hard disc and you get a message stating “The drive is locked by bit locker”.

BitLocker Drive Encryption will lock an encrypted drive and require recovery in these situations:

1. BitLocker has detected a possible security risk during startup.
2. BitLocker startup key or PIN is lost, or the startup key is damaged.

Note 1: if a drive is locked using Bit Locker there is no way you can unlock it without the key. if you don’t have the key you cannot access the Drive. The key or the Recovery drive is the only way to access your drive back.

Note 2: Bit Locker will not be enabled automatically.

Regain access to a computer locked by BitLocker Drive Encryption:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-drive-encryption

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Communities.

Hi

I face the same problem. My drive was locked by itself, as i connected it on another computer. I never used bitlocker in the first place.

This is a serious bug that microsoft has to fix immediately

Hi Lena,

Thank you for the reply.

Sorry to hear about the inconvenience.

By default Bit locker will not  lock any drives unless it is locked by user.

If you still have any issues with Bit locker please do let us know and thank you for sharing this information.

I am afraid your information is not correct.  This same problem has now happened to me twice.

Whilst transferring files from my 8.1 machine to a seagate hdd, when I attempted to read that drive on my windows 7 machine it said it was locked by bitlocker.  I too hadn't heard of bitlockr and never locked the drive in the first place.

I could still access the drive on the 8.1 machine however so I bought another drive and was able to copy my stuff from one drive to the other on the 8.1 machinE.  This time the new drive wan't locked.  The old drive is still inaccessible except on the 8.1 machine.

The same thing has now happened again on the new drive.  It too is bit locked without me requesting it.  This is a serious bug and I am surprised you guys don't know about it.  I think it might have been caused by me unplugging the the drive without using the remove drive option on the task bar but whatever, it shouldn't have locked my drive.  

I don't think it is actually encrypted because it doesn't even ask me for a key, but it is still unavailable on another computer.  It has probably just been corrupted by 8.1

This really is a serious issue and needs to be sorted quickly.  Thanks

Hi Yeoman,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

I would suggest you to refer to the Microsoft help article:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-8/bitlocker-drive-encryption

Also I suggest you to post this issue in TechNet forum we have a dedicated team with advanced tools and permissions to help you with this issue so please post you query on TechNet forum.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/home?category=w8itpro

For reference:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831507.aspx