Windows 10: Windows 11 went to sleep while USB drive was enabling Bitlocker, drive got corrupted

At this point this is less a question and more a report since I've taken destructive action on the target drive to ensure it is, indeed, still physically healthy.In Windows 11 Pro Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.755] I was enabling Bitlocker on an external USB drive.The computer went into sleep mode.When the computer was woken up, the Bitlocker process seemed frozen. It no longer progressed. I checked the Event Viewer and saw a lot of errors like these:The IO operation at logical block address 0x5debb8 for Disk 2 PDO name:&nb

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Windows 8.1 PRO unable to unlock Bitlocked drive

That's not good. You can try re-installing Windows 8 and unlocking the drive, and disabling Bitlocker on that drive, before upgrading to 8.1. Though I have a bad feeling that even going back to Windows 8 might not help, I have a feeling the drive just bit the dust and corrupted the file system...

 

Bitlocker encrypted corrupt usb drive.

Hi Patriq,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Community Forums.

Appreciate your efforts to work on this issue.

I can understand the situation must be difficult for you when the Bitlocker encrypted USB drive doesn't work as it should.

Please answer these questions to get more clarity on this issue:

1. Does the USB drive work on a different PC?
   
2. What is the error code or message you get while trying to access the USB drive?
   
3. Do you have the Bitlocker recovery key for the external hard disk?.
   

However, let us follow these methods to ensure that the USB drive gets recognized on the PC. Once this is done then you can use the encryption key to decrypt the drive after which you can access the files on the drive. As there is data on the drive
which is not backed up, suggest you not to format the drive as this action will result in data loss.

Method 1: Plug in the USB drive into another PC to check if the drive gets recognized and if yes, then you can try to access the files in the drive.

Method 2: As you are able to see the drive when you boot under UEFI, suggest you to run check disk to fix any bad sectors on the external hard drive and check if that helps.

Check Disk or Chkdsk.exe is a built-in Windows utility used to check for errors in the disk media and in the file system. The Check Disk utility or ChkDsk.exe checks file system errors, bad sectors, lost clusters, and so on.

Note: While performing check disk on the hard drive if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive when chkdsk tries to repair that sector if any data available on that might be lost.

1. Open Command Prompt in admin mode. Click Start, type ‘Command Prompt’ and you’ll see “Command Prompt” listed as the main result. Right-click that result and choose “Run as administrator”.
   
2. Once CMD window is open, type ‘chkdsk (Your problem drive letter without parentheses): /x. This forces the volume to dismount. Also invalidates all open file handles.
   

Once this is done, restart the computer and see if that makes any difference.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Srimadhwa B

Microsoft Community-Moderator

 

Clone Bitlocker enable drive to SSD

Keitaro

My name is Andre Da Costa; an Independent Consultant, Windows Insider MVP and Windows & Devices for IT MVP. I'm here to help you with your problem.

Heed the advice of the software, you must disable BitLocker before cloning. This is highly recommend if you ever want to get access to the drive.

There is nothing wrong with having to re-enable it after restoring the clone.

Step 1: disable BitLocker.

Step 2: clone drive

Step 3: restore the cloned image to the new drive.

Step 4: Re-Enable BitLocker.