Windows 10: Bitlocker Stuck at 62.9% in win 10 Pro on a external drive

Hello,



I connected by USB an external wd drive and I started the encryption on my disk and it went very well to 60% and then stoped for hours. I selected pause and after 30 minutes it did pause so I thought it was only taking more time so I selected resume, in a few minutes went to 62.9% so I believed everything was good. Until it stopped again and it stayed like that for 24h, after that I tried to pause again and nothing. I tried that for a lot of hours and no change in progress or stopping. My drive has a led that shows if the drive has been accessed and the led stopped stay permanent on, and no longer blinking like it was doing at the beginning of the process. My machine started to act very strange and I took the risk to restart since the encryption was not moving and nothing was happening on the drive.



After the machine rebooted I was not able to see the drive anymore, I can see the PC is detecting an external drive on the USB but I can't find it as a driver and nothing happens when I plug the drive to the machine, no request of password nothing.



I have the password and the recovery key in a different location.



Please help me with this since the information that I have on the drive is very important and that was the reason I was doing Bitlock in the first place

:)

 

File back up to bitlockered external drive

Thanks John.

By trial and error the solution is,

• Set the file back up to the desired external USB drive, Back up using file history.
• Run backup to completion.
• Dismount, (Remove) the drive used.
• Remount (Plug in) the drive used for the file back up (Steps 1&2) and encrypt using Bitlocker.

Note you can only encrypt drives using some versions of Windows (Pro for eg not Home)

• Once the external drive has been encrypted dismount.
• Remount the drive, go to the file back up option, Open, Settings, Backup,
  Back up using file history.
• The drive should now still be visible and has been encrypted.
• Accessing the drive will be dependant on how it was set up in Bitlocker,
  Open with this PC, password, pin code etc.
• Repeat file back up as in the first two steps.

Hope this helps someone else.

 

Bitlocker on multiple external drives

Hi Myron,



Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.



I understand that you are facing issues with using bitlocker on Windows 10. I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.

The issue could occur if bitlocker settings is incorrect.

I suggest you to try decrypting the volume for the multiple external drives and then reset the bitlocker for the multiple drives.

Refer to the below Microsoft Help Article.

Note: The step provided in the below link is also applicable in Windows 10.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...er-Drive-Encryption-and-decrypting-the-volume

Let us know if you need any further assistance on Windows related issues and we will be glad to help.

 

Remove BitLocker for external drive

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



We understand that you want to disable BitLocker for the external hard drive. However, we would like to know if you are able to access data from the external hard drive.



In the meantime, you may refer the steps mentioned below to disable BitLocker:

1. Type Command Prompt in the search bar on the
   Taskbar.
   
2. Right click on the Command Prompt icon and select
   Run as administrator.
   
3. Type manage-bde –off X: and hit
   Enter. (Replace X with the drive letter of the external hard drive)
   

Meanwhile, you may also post your query in
TechNet forums, where we have support professionals who are well equipped with the knowledge on BitLocker to address your query.



Regards,

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator