- Mar 30, 2017
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Hello Technology Genii,
I have "successfully" cloned a failing (bad sectors) external 4TB Seagate HDD using ddrescue to an "identical" Seagate HDD (Same model/size --> RMA from Seagate).
The bit by bit clone salvaged all but... 180GB of data (Yikes).
I am now looking at the replacement drive, which has the recovered data/partitions and have effectively read soooooo many posts/troubleshooting steps/methods/opinions online in an effort to do my due diligence that I am absolutely puzzled on how to proceed without messing up the cloned data.
The big concern:
The failing drive which I cloned has/had Bitlocker Encrypted Partitions (2 out of 3 are Bitlocker Encrypted). Since the drive that I cloned from has bad sectors, I'm not confident in running the common sense plays to move forward and "unlock/decrypt" the recovered partitions using Bitlocker Repair Tool, windows command line tools such as: manage-bde/repair-bde, M3 Data Recovery.
In other words, I have no threshold understanding of the proper procedure to move forward on unlocking the recovered Bitlocker encrypted partitions and recovering the data.
The original drive from which I made the clone (failing Seagate 4TB external HDD) has enough read errors to make the creators of "Hooked On Phonics" weep, so interacting with that drive is becoming less viable by the minute.
I obviously know the password I encrypted the Bitlocker partitions with, and furthermore I had enough sense to save the text file containing the recovery key sequence.
Thus far, I have taken the new 4TB HDD with the ddrescue cloned data and plugged it into my Windows 10 laptop.
The laptop see's the drive (both in file explorer and disk management console). The encrypted partitions display (as I would expect) with a golden "This stuff is locked bro" key in Windows Explorer. When I double click on the cloned, locked/encrypted partition, it asks me for the password/recovery key WHICH IT DOESN"T ACCEPT!
I am not sure if I should use the Windows Checkdisk utility to "scan/repair" the cloned encrypted partitions, so I will abstain.
My thinking of what to do is as follows (and is likely very naive/without couth):
1. Repair? any potential corruption caused by "bad sectors" on the cloned, encrypted partitions. (again, I don't know what data of the 180GB that couldn't be recovered due to bad sectors relates to the critical structure/required configuration of the Bitlocker encyryption system itself)
2. If the Bitlocker configuration/critical pieces can be repaired/or are intact, proceed with attempting to decrypt/unlock the data using the Bitlocker password and/or recovery keys that I have backed up (In the cloud/not at risk).
Please, for the love of binary, someone with a sufficient technical understanding of Bitlocker and/or similar scenarios provide me some insight.
Thank you soooo much for any effort/help you are willing to offer.
I am an L2 Desktop Support guy, so you can be technical but consider the fact that I am not A+ certified and have not taken any "official" courses which would have taught me a low level understanding of storage/Bitlocker engineering.
Some snapshots from my Windows 10 laptop showing the cloned Seagate 4TB hdd in File Explorer and Disk Management Console attached to this post.
Also, this is my first request for community technical help ever.
I have "successfully" cloned a failing (bad sectors) external 4TB Seagate HDD using ddrescue to an "identical" Seagate HDD (Same model/size --> RMA from Seagate).
The bit by bit clone salvaged all but... 180GB of data (Yikes).
I am now looking at the replacement drive, which has the recovered data/partitions and have effectively read soooooo many posts/troubleshooting steps/methods/opinions online in an effort to do my due diligence that I am absolutely puzzled on how to proceed without messing up the cloned data.
The big concern:
The failing drive which I cloned has/had Bitlocker Encrypted Partitions (2 out of 3 are Bitlocker Encrypted). Since the drive that I cloned from has bad sectors, I'm not confident in running the common sense plays to move forward and "unlock/decrypt" the recovered partitions using Bitlocker Repair Tool, windows command line tools such as: manage-bde/repair-bde, M3 Data Recovery.
In other words, I have no threshold understanding of the proper procedure to move forward on unlocking the recovered Bitlocker encrypted partitions and recovering the data.
The original drive from which I made the clone (failing Seagate 4TB external HDD) has enough read errors to make the creators of "Hooked On Phonics" weep, so interacting with that drive is becoming less viable by the minute.
I obviously know the password I encrypted the Bitlocker partitions with, and furthermore I had enough sense to save the text file containing the recovery key sequence.
Thus far, I have taken the new 4TB HDD with the ddrescue cloned data and plugged it into my Windows 10 laptop.
The laptop see's the drive (both in file explorer and disk management console). The encrypted partitions display (as I would expect) with a golden "This stuff is locked bro" key in Windows Explorer. When I double click on the cloned, locked/encrypted partition, it asks me for the password/recovery key WHICH IT DOESN"T ACCEPT!
I am not sure if I should use the Windows Checkdisk utility to "scan/repair" the cloned encrypted partitions, so I will abstain.
My thinking of what to do is as follows (and is likely very naive/without couth):
1. Repair? any potential corruption caused by "bad sectors" on the cloned, encrypted partitions. (again, I don't know what data of the 180GB that couldn't be recovered due to bad sectors relates to the critical structure/required configuration of the Bitlocker encyryption system itself)
2. If the Bitlocker configuration/critical pieces can be repaired/or are intact, proceed with attempting to decrypt/unlock the data using the Bitlocker password and/or recovery keys that I have backed up (In the cloud/not at risk).
Please, for the love of binary, someone with a sufficient technical understanding of Bitlocker and/or similar scenarios provide me some insight.
Thank you soooo much for any effort/help you are willing to offer.
I am an L2 Desktop Support guy, so you can be technical but consider the fact that I am not A+ certified and have not taken any "official" courses which would have taught me a low level understanding of storage/Bitlocker engineering.
Some snapshots from my Windows 10 laptop showing the cloned Seagate 4TB hdd in File Explorer and Disk Management Console attached to this post.
Also, this is my first request for community technical help ever.
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