Bitlocker ruined my external HDD!

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Fortitude

Reputable
Jun 19, 2014
201
0
4,680
Decided to enable Bitlocker for a partition on my 2TB Hard drive, which was approximately 850-900GB. About 10% in, I had to pause it, and the computer had to be turned off to be used by someone else. I removed the hard drive after safely ejecting it. The next day I resumed the encryption until it got to 20.2% when I had to log off once again. Again, I safely ejected and unplugged the EHDD. The next day when I plug in the drive, as usual, I'm prompted to type in its password before bitlocker pops up to resume the encryption, but this time when it pops up and I click resume, it says "Encryption could not be resumed/ Device not ready".

I can now no longer use any bitlocker functions on the drive, nor access the precious files (Which are not backed up as I have no adequate drive to do so), and CHKDSK "Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted."

What should I do to fix this problem? I have no backup for this partition which is my media partition, containing several full seasons of some shows, a bunch of movies, some games and loads of precious pictures.
 
Solution
hang-the-9
$170 for data recovery of an encrypted drive with errors is a bargain. I guess that does not help if you don't have the money, but it's very cheap in relation to what it can cost. You could spend 10 times that depending on what happened with the drive. A backup drive is maybe $30, 20, you can get a used one that tests with no errors. I sell 320GB - 500 GB used laptop drives all the time for $15-25 so you should be able to find those drives out there easily, lots of people upgrading to SSDs to there are used platter drives of good size to be had for cheap.
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
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Hey there, Fortitude.

Partially encrypted drive with important information which hasn't been backed up is really really bad news. Unfortunately you've learned that the hard way. :(
Since you need to recover data, you could give it a try with data recovery software: https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2622893 in hopes that you'd be able to get to the pictures at least (this is the only high priority data, since everything else is replaceable).
You should also check out this link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424308(v=ws.10).aspx

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940
I doubt any recovery software can do anything with the drive, if it started to encrypt the device the recovery software will just see random data, not files to restore. The data was not deleted, it was encrypted. I've had quite a few encryption failures on disks that made me start from the beginning on new hard drives because the other ones had errors on them which caused encryption to fail and make the whole disk unusable.
 
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F

Fortitude

Reputable
Jun 19, 2014
201
0
4,680

Not a single one of the recovery programs worked. One I found which successfully scanned was M3 Bitlocker recovery, but it only recovers 100MB unless you buy it for $170, and it automatically started recovery by default instead of letting me choose the files. I finally got the bitlocker repaiir program built into windows to work,which took all day to decrypt the partition and copy everything to another, BUT NOW I HAVE TWO bad partitions. It just made things worse! I really want my files, but I don't have $170 to dish out for M3. might anyone have a key I could use or know where I could get one legitimately/non for free?
 
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ex_bubblehead

ex_bubblehead

Titan
Moderator
Aug 24, 2012
16,254
1,522
87,240

This is not a question one asks here, tread very lightly. If you want to use the program then you buy your own license.
 
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F

Fortitude

Reputable
Jun 19, 2014
201
0
4,680


I guess poor+desperate=criminal sometimes. I just don't know what else to do. If I had money, I would've had a backup drive. I know the importance of it, just can't afford it. idk what to do and I'm really unhappy.
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940
$170 for data recovery of an encrypted drive with errors is a bargain. I guess that does not help if you don't have the money, but it's very cheap in relation to what it can cost. You could spend 10 times that depending on what happened with the drive. A backup drive is maybe $30, 20, you can get a used one that tests with no errors. I sell 320GB - 500 GB used laptop drives all the time for $15-25 so you should be able to find those drives out there easily, lots of people upgrading to SSDs to there are used platter drives of good size to be had for cheap.
 
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