Windows 10: How to turn BitLocker back on after turning it off to access external drive

This seems like something that should be incredibly easy, but it isn't.


I have a BitLocker protected external drive connected to my computer. When I unlock it in order to access it, I do not see any way to lock it up again other than to physically disconnect and reconnect it. This seems like a really dumb way to do it, but I do not see any other way. When I right click on the unlocked drive and go to Manage BitLocker, the only thing that looks like it might be the way to do it is "Turn on auto-lock" but when I click that, absolutely nothing happens. The drive remains unlocked.


Can anyone help?

:)

 

Encrypted External Drive that cannot be opened.

Hi Sana,

It is a good idea to use Bitlocker to protect hard drives. Please provide the following needed information:

1. How do you try to access the drive?

2. Do you get any pop-up message when trying to access the drive?

3. Is this an external hard drive?

You can turn off Bitlocker Drive Encryption by following these steps:

• 
  Login as Administrator to your PC.
  
• 
  Click Start, click Control Panel, click
  Security, and then click BitLocker Drive Encryption.
  
• 
  From the BitLocker Drive Encryption page, find the volume on which you want BitLocker Drive Encryption turned off, and click
  Turn Off BitLocker Drive Encryption.
  
• 
  From the What level of decryption do you want dialog box, click either
  Disable BitLocker Drive Encryption or Decrypt the volume as needed.
  

Regards.

 

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.

 

Need to turn off Bitlocker to install Windows 10

Hi,

We suggest doing the following steps again to resolve the issue. To complete the procedure, make sure that you have the following information:

• You must be able to provide administrative credentials.
• The drive must be BitLocker-protected.

To suspend BitLocker Drive Encryption on an operating system drive, please follow the steps below:

• Click Start, click Control Panel, click
  System and Security, and then click BitLocker Drive Encryption.
• Click Suspend Protection for the operating system drive.
• A message is displayed, informing you that your data will not be protected while BitLocker is suspended and asking if you want to suspend BitLocker Drive Encryption.
  
• Click Yes to continue and suspend BitLocker on the drive.

Let us know how it goes.