Windows 10: Bitlocker encrypted USB install disk.

Is it possible to encrypt a USB stick with Bitlocker and use it for windows installation?I tried it, but my system cannot detect the boot volume.When it's possible, what are the requirements for that?Thanks in advanceGeorg

:)

 

USBs encrypted with BitLocker To Go causes Windows 10 machines to hang following Windows Defender update to 4.18.1812.3-0

Hi Scott,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community forum.



This issue could be because of the drive letter being assigned automatically when the encrypted USB drive is plugged in.



You may want to try the steps listed below and see if it works for you.

• Plug in a flash drive without any encryption, format it completely.
  
• Right click the Windows icon on the taskbar and choose
  Disk Management.
  
• In the Disk Management console, right click the volume with the USB drive letter and select
  Change Drive Letter and Paths.
  
• Click on Change, choose E, and click
  OK.
  
• Restart the machine, plug in the encrypted USB drive
  and see if the issue persists.
  

If the issue persists, as the query is related to the BitLocker To Go configuration, I suggest you to post your query in the
TechNet Forums,
where we have support professionals who are well equipped with the knowledge on BitLocker to assist you with this.



Regards,

 

Bitlocker encrypted corrupt usb drive.

Hi Patriq,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Community Forums.

Appreciate your efforts to work on this issue.

I can understand the situation must be difficult for you when the Bitlocker encrypted USB drive doesn't work as it should.

Please answer these questions to get more clarity on this issue:

1. Does the USB drive work on a different PC?
   
2. What is the error code or message you get while trying to access the USB drive?
   
3. Do you have the Bitlocker recovery key for the external hard disk?.
   

However, let us follow these methods to ensure that the USB drive gets recognized on the PC. Once this is done then you can use the encryption key to decrypt the drive after which you can access the files on the drive. As there is data on the drive
which is not backed up, suggest you not to format the drive as this action will result in data loss.

Method 1: Plug in the USB drive into another PC to check if the drive gets recognized and if yes, then you can try to access the files in the drive.

Method 2: As you are able to see the drive when you boot under UEFI, suggest you to run check disk to fix any bad sectors on the external hard drive and check if that helps.

Check Disk or Chkdsk.exe is a built-in Windows utility used to check for errors in the disk media and in the file system. The Check Disk utility or ChkDsk.exe checks file system errors, bad sectors, lost clusters, and so on.

Note: While performing check disk on the hard drive if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive when chkdsk tries to repair that sector if any data available on that might be lost.

1. Open Command Prompt in admin mode. Click Start, type ‘Command Prompt’ and you’ll see “Command Prompt” listed as the main result. Right-click that result and choose “Run as administrator”.
   
2. Once CMD window is open, type ‘chkdsk (Your problem drive letter without parentheses): /x. This forces the volume to dismount. Also invalidates all open file handles.
   

Once this is done, restart the computer and see if that makes any difference.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Srimadhwa B

Microsoft Community-Moderator

 

Bitlocker encrypted disks loading without password in Windows 10

Hi,

I have several external USB backup disks all encrypted with Windows 7 Bitlocker but every disk loads up under Windows 10 without entering any password and all show as having no Bitlocker status. I tried encrypting one or two again with Bitlocker under Windows
10 but they still load up in Windows 10 without asking for any password at all and show as unencrypted. I am also really frustrated that it takes over 24 hours to encrypt a newly formatted 2TB disk! How can it be so inefficient to encrypt an empty disk? Much
more serious is why is Windows 10 allowing a Bitlocker encrypted disk to be loaded via USB as an unencrypted disk without asking for the password?

James.