Windows 10: Trashed 2nd drive when applying 10 BitLocker with Atmel TPM in T-61

My apologies in advance for the length of this...

Several days ago, I thought I had lost a Harddrive that was in a 2nd-drive Ultrabay. This got me thinking about drive encryption should this have happened for real. Fortunately I found the drive, and backed-up all the new incremental files.

First - it's a T-61, with Win 10 x-64 that I've put a SSD into, reserving the old HDD for archiving and restoring disk images (made with Acronis True Image 2015). The HDD "lives" in a "generic" Ultrabay caddy. The old drive still has its original partitioning in 3, a Active System C: (Windows 10), and back-up D: and E: partitions. The SSD is partitioned identically.

So I read through some material material on BitLocker, understanding the the Atmel TPM is accessed from the BIOS Security area. I checked the Win 10 Device Manager, and saw no sign of the Atmel TPM chip.

So I set the TPM to "Active", and not knowing if this had ever been used before, I cleared the contents. From there I rebooted, and now saw the Atmel in Device Manager. From there I went to BitLocker and looked at the set-up. What I saw were all 6 disk partitions (3 from the SSD, 3 from the HDD), all with BitLocker off. I'm not sure precisely what I did next - I think it was to set the TPM ready to be used, but I never set any of the partitions to BitLocker On. I may have turned the TPM off in Control Panel, then Rebooted, and set the Atmel TPM to disabled in the BIOS.

What I ended up with was catastrophic mess. The SSD was fine. The HDD wasn't. I found I couldn't open Office files as I lacked permission to do so. My Quicken files couldn't be opened either. However, if I copied the files, they would open, albeit with error messages that Word couldn't find its Temp files.

So, to make things simpler, I took the SSD out and put the HDD back in. (The DVD drive went back in the Ultrabay for a Win 10 install disk or the Acronis recovery disk.)

So I tried...
1. making sure the Environment variable %USERPROFILE% was correct, using a dump of all Environmental Variable using a command line Set command.
2. rebuilt the MBR and the BCD file after getting boots that gave me the choice of "Windows 10" (the "real" active partition), and a "Windows 10 Pro" option that gave a reboot.
3. looking at DISKPART which looked okay (but no partition listed as Active, just Primary)
4. making sure the the C: drive was "Active" (I could be mistaken, but at one point the 500 MB hidden partition may have been Active, and I changed it back to C: drive to be active.


Finally I gave up, and just re-imaged the C: partition.

So all this brought up the following questions:
1. Should one ever try doing BitLocker when two disks with active Windows partitions exist on each?
2. What happens when one take a Bit-Locked drive from one TPM activated T-61 to another one (either TPM-activated or not)? I assume that each TPM T-61 is encoded differently.
3. Why did the SSD survive all this without problems, but the HDD did not?
4. Is this something peculiar to T-61s and the Atmel TPM chip, or does this happen on any older BIOS-type machine vs UEFI?

:)

 

encryption file system in windows 10 pro

Just wanted to let you guys know that you can use bitlocker without a tpm. I was able to do it on 10 Enterprise. You have to change a local policy or have your addmin change the policy for you if your at work. You can tell it to allow bitlocker to work
without a tpm and use an additional password when booting up or to use a flash drive, the flash drive was optional, not required. This allowed me to ecrypt my fixed and/or external attached drives. Not sure what "BitLocker To Go" means. Havn't been able
to find it. Sorry if this doesn't apply. Just trying to help.

Thanks.

 

Bitlocker with TPM installed

Hi! I was able to encrypt my system drive with bitlocker with TPM.

Now I'm trying to use bitlocker to my other data drives but bitlocker can't use TPM.

Any help?