BitLocker locked my external harddrive by itself?!

One Year ago I did wrote:

How does Microsoft find itself as a company? These are not working systems and there is no repair. This in also a legal issue, is it not? Why is Microsoft incapable to solve problems and do it even try?

Today the poblem is there. It seems that no one is trying to solve it. When You are big enough customer has to obey and does not count any more.

I woke up this morning with the same problem as the original poster - BitLocker locked an external hard disk unbeknownst to me ... and of course I have no 48-digit recovery key or password because I didn't ask for it to do this - and am now freaking out. This thread, and Microsoft, have been ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS on solving this problem.

Here is what I've found out in my research in case it's helpful to others with the same problem. I should note that my laptop is a corporate issued laptop.

Why I think BitLocker Automatically Locked My External Hard Disk

My laptop's C drive is encrypted with BitLocker (but doesn't require this 48-digit recovery key). I turned Bitlocker off on my C drive to see if that would help. It decrypted the C drive but didn't unlock my external HD unfortunately. But I did find a clue: about an hour after turning BitLocker off, I noticed that the program "McAfee Management of Native Encryption" (MNE) automatically turned BitLocker on and started encrypting my C drive. I once again turned BitLocker off (via the Control Panel) but once again, McAfee MNE started it back up after a short time. I suspect this is what may have started the BitLocker encryption of my external HD without me initiating it. Maybe I kept the external HD plugged in too long and it got caught up in a McAfee MNE "I gotta encrypt everything" cycle?

So, I may have answered the "why BitLocker encrypted/locked my external HD" question, but I still have a worthless, locked HD that I can't access. On to that problem (after uninstalling McAfee MNE of course):

Unlocking my External HD - Getting my 48-digit Key

Here is what I tried but was worthless:

• My Microsoft account online, of course did not have my password

Here is what I tried, and was worthwhile in providing clues (and may be solve the problem for you), but didn't work for me:

• Using "manage-bde  -protectors -get d:" (where "d:" is your locked drive) as described in this thread from NCBrady's website.This command seems to give me info about the locked drive, but unfortunately it did gave me everything except the 48 character numerical password.

Here is what I still have to try:

• Contacting my corporate support group - I have an email in to them, but of course it's the 4th of July holiday so a response may not be imminent

I, too,  am facing the same issue. I manually backed up my files into my Seagate portable drive yesterday and worked fine. This morning, however, I was prompted to unlock my portable drive via a 48-digit recovery key subsequently after plugging it into my desktop. I am the admin of this machine and I did not enable bitlocker for any of my drives. I've also tried recovering my recovery key through "manage-bde -protectors -get K:" but none of which contained the 48-digit key.

Is there a solution yet?

I have the same problem too. My laptop is on Windows 10 and Bitlocker was turned ON on C drive. One day, I connected an external HDD. The next day when I tried to access the external HDD, it showed that it's locked and asked me to enter a 48-digit recovery key to unlock it. What a surprise!

I am an IT person, if the drive was locked/encrypted I would have paid attention and recorded the recovery key. How on earth did I expect Bitlocker did something without my consent. I tried to look for the file that might have the same key ID but there was no match. 

It's worse than a ransom-ware, which, at least, I can pay ransom under the table to rescue the locked data. Now, I can't do anything. Microsoft did a very good job in locking my drive and hiding the recovery key (in fact, they may not even know where they save the recovery key to) and saying that there is no way to unlock the drive.

I would say there is no way that Microsoft could let this happen without thoroughly testing how Bitlocker behaves in the real world in the first place. What a company!

Should I give up on expecting a solution?

I have the same problem too. My laptop is on Windows 10 and Bitlocker was turned ON on C drive. One day, I connected an external HDD. The next day when I tried to access the external HDD, it showed that it's locked and asked me to enter a 48-digit recovery key to unlock it. What a surprise!

I am an IT person, if the drive was locked/encrypted I would have paid attention and recorded the recovery key. How on earth did I expect Bitlocker did something without my consent. I tried to look for the file that might have the same key ID but there was no match. 

It's worse than a ransom-ware, which, at least, I can pay ransom under the table to rescue the locked data. Now, I can't do anything. Microsoft did a very good job in locking my drive and hiding the recovery key (in fact, they may not even know where they save the recovery key to) and saying that there is no way to unlock the drive.

I would say there is no way that Microsoft could let this happen without thoroughly testing how Bitlocker behaves in the real world in the first place. What a company!

Should I give up on expecting a solution?

I am an IT professional and have experienced this problem twice. On both occasions I located the offending PC (they were not mine - I only connected the drive to transfer data from an old customer's PC). After connecting the drive to the offending PC turn Bitlocker off and wait until it has finished unlocking the drive - both times it was not possible to unlock just the USB drive you had to turn bitlocker off. If actually want Bitlocker on on the PC you would have to turn it back on after disconnecting the drive - an utterly ridiculous carry on every time you connect an external USB drive!

Should you expect a solution - apparently not!

What an utter disgrace.