Windows 10: Cannot read files on unlocked bitlocker usb thumbdrive

Hi,


I am trying to adapt to the new security restrictions put together by my company which means that all external devices harddrive or thumbdrives need to be bitlocker encrypted to receive files from my computer.


However I am faced with a problem after encrypting on a win10 laptop a test FAT32 thumbdrive with bitolocker and adding files on it:

- If I connect the thumbdrive on the original lapotp it's been encrypted on, I can read all the files after unlocking the drive with my password

- If I connect the thumbdrive to a different win10 laptop, I can unlock the thumbdrive and see all the files, but if I double click on a text file, it opens with a lot of gibberish characters and if I open a pdf or image, I don't remember the message, but nothing good happens.

- I tried connecting the thumbdrive to a mac with bitlocker compatible softwares and I can unlock the drive as well but the files are not readable either

- if I turn off the bitlocker encryption from the original laptop used for the encryption, the decryption starts, and once finished, I can see all the files of the thumbdrive on either another win10 laptop or mac without having to use any password, but still have problems opening files copied to the thumbdrive after the thumbdrive was encrypted.


any clue what I should check or what this may be about ?

:)

 

“Please insert disk into USB Drive” when unlocking Bitlocker encrypted Thumbdrive on 8.1/10

I have several USB thumbdrives of various brands. We use Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) and Bitlocker to encrypt the thumb drives.

I will take a brand new thumb drive, plug it into my machine. It mounts as the D drive, and I am able to copy files to it. I then enable bitlocker on the drive and encrypt the entire drive. Once the encryption is complete, I am still able to read the drive and put files on it. I properly eject the drive, plug it back in, it prompts for a password, as expected, I put in the correct password and the drive unlocks.

The drive icon in Windows explorer changes from the locked icon to the unlocked icon. I then go to open the drive, and it says “Please insert disk into USB Drive”.

I then go into disk management and change the drive letter from D to F, and it works. I am able to get into the drive with no problems. I then properly eject the drive, plug it back in, put in the password, it unlocks, I go to open the drive and it says “Please insert disk into USB Drive” I change the drive letter back from F to D, and then Im able to open the drive.

Ive tried this with five different thumb drives, and five different PCs. This seems to only be happening on Windows 8.1 and 10. My Windows 7 machine works fine.

Has anyone seen this before? Could there have been a recent update that caused this to happen?

I know the drive is not bad and the data is intact. I dont need a drive recovery program. It seems like when bitlocker unlocks the drive, it just doesnt associate it with the drive letter.

 

HELP: Automatic BitLocker Unlock.

Thank you sir, ill try your solution.

Windows Auto unlock ONLY works in case you have Bitlocker on your system drive, because if your system drive is not encrypted auto unlocking other drives means loss of security.
But in my case my system drive is Encrypted with hardware encryption that i password unlock during boot. So auto unlocking Bitlocker drives will do fine for me.

 

HELP: Automatic BitLocker Unlock.

more clear
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I managed to figure out how to fix this. It doesn't use the native auto-unlock function like I was hoping (rather a script that unlocks using a .BEK file, as I mentioned) but it seems to work just as well.

First, you need to create a .BEK file that can unlock the disk. This is the command I used:

manage-bde -protectors -add d: -rk c:\

Substitute d: with whichever drive you want to auto-unlock. The output will look something like this (take note of the "external key file name"):

BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.10011
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Key Protectors Added:

Saved to directory c:\

External Key:
ID: {9DDF4900-5E08-479A-8C4C-6ADE2DA00551}
External Key File Name:
9DDF4900-5E08-479A-8C4C-6ADE2DA00551.BEK

Now you need to create the script to unlock the drive. Just create a batch file in the root directory with the following line:

manage-bde -unlock d: -rk C:\[external key filename]

Again, replace d: with the correct drive letter. Replace [external key filename] with the filename you got before.

Finally, you need to tell Windows to run this script at startup, before you log in. (Or at least I needed it to run then, because that's where my desktop, etc. are stored.) Here's how you do that:

• Press Win+R and enter gpedit.msc. (This is only in Pro, but so is BitLocker, so that's not an issue here.)
  
  
• On the left, navigate to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)
  
  
• Double-click "Startup" on the right
  
  
• Click "Add..." and select the batch file you created before.
  
  
• Click OK and exit Group Policy Editor.
  

Now you can reboot the computer to test it. You should see your drive automatically unlocked