Windows 10: Auto Unlock BitLocked drives

Hi.I am just seeking some advice for the following desired implementation for encrypting drives and doing backups.I have a set of 5 USB external drives, which I have encrypted using BitLocker on a Windows 10 PC.All these drives have the same drive label, which is required for the backup system I am using.I have a server, running Server 2019, which I then connect these drives into to use to back up data.Mostly working as desired, but having an issue at the moment is the Auto UnLock functionality.I am wanting the server to be not logged in to any user accounts, and have someone connect any of th

:)

 

Enable Bitlocker auto-unlock without system drive encryption

1. turn off bitlocker on the drive you want to auto-unlock
   
2. mount this drive as a removable drive
   i.e plug it into a usb attached drive unit such as StarTech or many others
   
3. boot the system and bitlock the drive and turn on auto-unlock
   
4. shutdown the system
   
5. mount the drive as a permanent drive
   
6. reboot the system and the drive will auto-unlock because windows now thinks
   that it is a removable drive
   

Works For Me with no problems

 

HELP: Automatic BitLocker Unlock.

Thank you sir, ill try your solution.

Windows Auto unlock ONLY works in case you have Bitlocker on your system drive, because if your system drive is not encrypted auto unlocking other drives means loss of security.
But in my case my system drive is Encrypted with hardware encryption that i password unlock during boot. So auto unlocking Bitlocker drives will do fine for me.

 

Bitlocker not auto unlocking

So, we have many systems about 15 of them in which we have a removable device USB that is encrypted by Bitlocker. We have set the system up so that the drive auto unlocks. However, if the OS is rebooted the drive will not auto unlock. I have even tried running the power shell script Enable-BitLockerAutoUnlock -MountPoint "c:" I get no error messages and according to the output I get it seems to have unlocked it, but it has not, it is still locked. So, I must manually right click the drive--unlock--put the password in and then it unlocks. But when the OS reboots it will lock again. Also, I can see that the drive I am trying to auto unlock has the status of drive is auto unlocked is set to true when I run a BitLocker status.

What we are trying to do is when the OS does reboot the drive autounlocks without us having too manually do so. We have an application that writes data to this USB drive, but when it is locked the application cannot access the drive so it cannot save the data to it. Running this command after manage-bde -autounlock -enable H: before I run the other gives me the error message that the volume is locked. Running Win 10 22H2



This data on the USB device is connected to the same system or the host. Another words the USB is connected to the USB port on the computer in which it was originally encrypted and is now connected, and the data being transferred goes from computer to USB, it does not travel anywhere outside of the USB. So, this data would be considered at rest, and it my understanding that a device encrypted by BitLocker that is already unlocked, will not lock unless when some variable changes, such as taking this USB drive out of this machine and connecting it to another machine, but this is not the case. So, if this is true then what would cause BitLocker to lock the drive just by rebooting Windows, and then the auto unlock feature to not work? I am guessing if I knew that I could fix the auto unlock feature.