Windows 10: BitLocker asking for recovery key after moving HDD to optical drive caddy

I replaced the original HDD in my Dell Inspiron 15-3567 manufactured 2018 with a new SSD, then moved the original HDD to the optical drive bay using a caddy. Beforehand, I made a Windows installation flash drive and also saved any files I wanted from the original HDD in another location. The new SSD seems to be working fine and Windows installed with no problems.However, when I go to File Explorer and click on the "D" drive where the original HDD now resides, I get a pop-up window asking for a BitLocker recovery key, even though this laptop came pre-installed with Windows 10 Home edition

:)

 

Can the system boot from HDD connected with Optical Drive Caddy?

I have a Dell Vostro 3546 Laptop, which is now 3 yrs old.

It was not powering on (4 to 5 months back) and I had it repaired by a local technician though, the power issue was fixed but a new issue took place, the system wasn't (and still) detecting HDD.

I checked connecting the HDD with other PC, its working fine and has all the data & partitions, but Laptop is not detecting Hard drive

A friend of mine suggested to try connecting the hard drive with Optical Drive Caddy, and according to him the system will boot, as I can change the boot sequence, but I want to make sure if this will work before I disassemble the Laptop.

So, will the system be able to boot from Hard drive connected with Optical drive caddy and the main HDD port (socket) left empty??

Kindly drop suggestions with specific details.

Error Code the system had produced after diagnosing:

Note:

1. If the system can boot with HDD connected with Optical Drive Caddy, the Read/Write speeds would differ, but how likely the difference would be.??
   
2. Do I need to configure BIOS with particular settings for doing so.??
   

 

Optical bay HDD caddy makes my drives behave weirdly

I have a HDD and an SSD, one regular drive bay and one optical drive bay. I bought a caddy from Amazon to be able to use both drives.
At first, my HDD was in the regular HDD bay and the SSD in the caddy. It was very painful but I managed to install Windows on the SSD, and it booted but the installation was messy, so I tried to switch them.

So now, the SSD is in the regular drive bay and the HDD with the caddy is in the optical drive bay. That's when it gets very weird. I could install Windows on the SSD without any issue, but Windows wouldn't boot if the HDD had any sort of filesystem specified (with Windows installed on the SSD!).
I deleted the partition table with a Linux live CD, and Windows would boot properly.

The HDD was detected on any Windows utility, but when I tried to assign it a letter or to create a partition table with Diskpart, the utility would just freeze, and then I had to clean the HDD with the live CD to be able to boot on Windows again. I could format the HDD as NTFS without any issue on the live CD, but then Windows wouldn't boot. I then installed Linux Mint on the SSD with a dual boot, and it seems to have the same kind of issue, the partition manager freezes if I try to do anything on the HDD.

I've cleaned the pins and everything. The issue clearly comes from the caddy so the next step in my mind is trying to get another optical bay caddy to check if it does the same thing but I wanted to see if anyone has any other idea that I could check before that?

Thanks.

 

HDD in a HDD caddy is not showing up in the disk management

Hi,

To assist you better, I would like to ask some questions:

• How are you connecting the HDD Caddy?
• What is the make and model of your computer?

If you are connecting the device using USB, I suggest you to check if other USB devices are recognized as USB devices or Other device. If it is displaying as other device, then the issue might be with the USB port. So, I suggest you to update the USB drivers
by following the steps below:

• Press Windows key + X, select Device Manager.
• Expand Universal Serial Bus Controller.
• Right click on the drive, select Update Driver Software and follow the on-screen prompts.

Keep us posted on the status for further assistance.