Windows 10: Bitlocker on secondary drive after installing new drive

I had my main hdd lock up and when I restarted it went to repair pc which it could not do. When I go into the advance options I have been able to use the recovery key to turn off the drive but it still will not let me repair the start up. So I went ahead and installed the new ssd that I was going to install as the c drive with windows 10 and I have two slots I. The laptop so put my original hdd I slot two. I do not have bitlocker installed on the new ssd drive. I would like to try and gain access the old drive to try and repair it but file management does have unlock but locker in it when I tr

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Windows 10 1909 Causes Secondary Hard Drive to not be Recognized

Installing the Windows 10 1909 Update causes my secondary hard drive to not be recognized.

Steps to confirm issue:

• Secondary drive not visible in Windows Explorer
• Secondary drive not visible in device manager
• Secondary drive not visible in disk manager

Steps to replicate issue:

• Installing 1909 update

Steps to resolve issue:

• Uninstall 1909 update

Since updates can only be delayed for so long, an actual fix would be appreciated.

 

BitLocker cannot encrypt secondary fixed drive

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with two NVMe SSDs. Both have been encrypted with BitLocker for years.

Recently I had to send the laptop for repairs and they replaced the motherboard and reset the device and thus the drives. Once I got it back, I restored the drives from my Acronis True Image 2020 backup images. The OS booted back to its original state before the hardware repair. Unsurprisingly, the drives lost their encrypted state.

When attempting to re-encrypt the system drive, BitLocker threw an error "The system cannot find the file specified." I learnt that the file C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml may be corrupt and needs to be deleted. I found and renamed the files

• C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml
  
• C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent_Merged.xml1
  

and was able to get BitLocker to commence encrypting the system drive again.

However, there's another problem - the secondary drive D: is missing from the Fixed data drives list.





Neither can I right-click on it to initiate BitLocker from Windows Explorer context menu.

What should I do to get the system to re-recognise my secondary drive?

 

BitLocker cannot encrypt secondary fixed drive

So it seems when I was performing the restoration procedure, the secondary drive partition got marked as active. Looks like Windows does not like other active partitions that weren't used to boot the OS, and won't treat them as "fixed data drives".

After marking the secondary drive partition as inactive (with diskpart) and a restart, Windows/BitLocker finally acknowledges the secondary drive and can commence with encryption.