Windows 10: Can I encrypt operating system drive AND fixed drives?

So I recently, turned on BitLocker on an operating system drive and I am wondering if I can encrypt an operating system drive AND a fixed drive? with BitLocker

:)

 

"the operating system drive is not protected by bitlocker drive encryption"

Hi.

My pc has 8 drives attached to it.

A: sata ssd

B: usb

C: m2 nvme

E: m2 nvme

U: sata ssd

W: usb

X: sata hdd

Y: sata hdd

E, U X and Y are bitlocked.

I wanted to turn on the auto-unlock feature, which worked fine except for drive E, which give the error,

"the operating system drive is not protected by bitlocker drive encryption"

E isn't the os drive, but it is a fixed data drive, whereas the others are categorised as "removable".

I'm not sure what that means or how I ended up configured this way.

Can anyone explain this? How do I turn on auto unlock for E: do I have to encrypt C: as well?

How have I ended up with the sata drives being catagorised as removable and the nvme fixed? Is that a consequence of the connection type? Or did I stuff something up when built the machine?

Thanks in advance

 

external drive and encryption?

This question is two-fold.

First I would like an external enclosure that is rugged and shock resistant (static electricity and the like, being winter and all) for a 3.5inch SATA drive.
Barring that, an external drive with the above. What would you guys recommend?

Also, I was wondering, is there a tool to encrypt the entire hard drive, but that does NOT ask to format said encrypted disk? I tried TrueCrypt, and last time I did, it asked me to format the drive because it was not recognized. I know there are alternatives, but I forgot their names. Price is of no concern if it is able to do so. any suggestions? Does Windows not show "drive must be formatted" on TrueCrypt drives anymore?

Best way would be if I plug in the drive, it asks for password automatically or something...

 

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?