Bitlocker USB stick unusable ? ( windows 7 )

[cgilmour]

Hi,

we were using bitlocker to encrypt some exam videos on a USB drive to send off and the bitlocker encryption errored towards the end and advised us to use chkdsk . This then failed as it said the drive was write protected.

 

We are now unable to unlock the drive either using the original password or the recovery key.

 

I have also tried a command line repair tool. This appeared to work but resulted in an empty target drive and the original drive is still "write protected".

 

We are not trying to recover the data from the drive as it's stored elsewhere , I'm just trying to see if I can get the USB stick usable again as we have many more exam usb's to encrypt with bitlocker and send off!

 

We are still on windows 7 but will move soon!.

 

TIA for any advice.

 

Chris

[chazzy2501]

Only a theory but some drives will go into read only mode if they detect a failure (early SSDs did), this maybe a hardware issue.

[Primus]

I'd bin the stick and use a new one - you can't trust that now.

[theeggmaster]

You could try SDFormatter or FAT32Format. I imagine it may be a faulty memory stick, however.

[Jawloms]

Worth running diskpart and doing a "clean" command on it, but if that fails then I'd bin it. I'm not saying that diskpart is the final word in disk utilities at all, but if you have to try harder than that, it's not worth risking data on the drive, particularly exam data.

[Arthur]

I have had a very similar issue and it turned out the flash drive was faulty.

 

It almost always seems to happen with those cheap generic drives that teacher's love to save their work on.

 

[tmoon-mint]

Yep as above had the exact same issue for a member of staff and the stick turned out to be faulty. Luckily they had backed the data up already!

[flyinghaggis]

We've had this happen to a member of staff as well. They encrypted the stick using bitlocker and neither the password or recovery key would unlock it. As other have said we assumed there was somekind of hardware fault with the USB stick.

 

It's annoying though as when this happens the finger of blame tends to be pointed at IT even though it's likely a hardware fault and they should really have a copy of the data stored elsewhere.

Edited May 1, 2019 by flyinghaggis

[theeggmaster]

If I'm asked to put BitLocker on a stick, I back everything up to Google Drive before I encrypt it. I then share it with them, make them the owner and remove my access. That way, I can't be blamed for any data loss as I know it's definitely backed up. Bit of a pain when it's a 2Tb USB hard drive.

[MYK-IT]

Similar-ish issue here, as in a BitLocker encrypted external USB HDD unable to be accessed... Upon connection, password prompt appears, enter correct BitLocker password all OK but then cannot access contents of HDD.

 

Not sure if physical issue with HDD yet, I'm currently 5 hours in using M3 BitLocker Recovery (Trial Version) to see if anything is retrievable (1 hour to go!)

 

Unfortunately, teacher hadn't also put content in their OneDrive account... despite always being told too.

 

Open to suggestions to alternative Bitlocker Data Recovery software. M3 is about $180..

 

Thanks,

[flyinghaggis]

It's worrying that this seems to have happened to so many people on this forum where the drive/stick won't accept the password or recovery code.

 

It makes me wonder if it's an indication of a deeper issue rather than just hardware faults with devices. Even if it is a hardware fault surely this wouldn't render the entire device unusable unless the boot/file system part of the drive failed or became corrupted?

 

 

Not sure if physical issue with HDD yet, I'm currently 5 hours in using M3 BitLocker Recovery (Trial Version) to see if anything is retrievable (1 hour to go!)

 

Weirdly, even though Windows wouldn't accept the password, the M3 Trial recovery appeared to be able to read the USB drive file system when I entered the password to run the demo version. I never found out whether it would work as we never purchased the software in the end?

 

That's what also made me suspicious that there's some kind of issues with Bitlocker rather than just faulty memory sticks? Cheap old memory sticks can be very unreliable though so maybe that is the cause when combined with the increased overhead of encryption

Edited May 1, 2019 by flyinghaggis

[Primus]

I think it's more that encryption thrashes the drive and exposes hidden underlying faults that would have eventually come to light but do far sooner because of this.

[Arthur]

Similar-ish issue here, as in a BitLocker encrypted external USB HDD unable to be accessed... Upon connection, password prompt appears, enter correct BitLocker password all OK but then cannot access contents of HDD.

I have also had this issue. What I did was to create an exact image of the drive with 'ddrescue' (via Parted Magic), mount the resulting image on a Windows 10 PC with OSFMount and then enter the relevant Bitlocker password when prompted.

 

I think there must have only been a few bad sectors because in this case I was able to successfully access the cloned encrypted drive and copy the data somewhere else. The teacher later found there were a few corrupt PowerPoint files, but everything else seems fine.

[MYK-IT]

Thanks @Arthur I'll try that out, I should have a copy of Ghost somewhere...

[cgilmour]

That's interesting you managed to read the filesystem with the Trial software as ours is in a permanently write protected state but we haven't tried that M3 software yet. I'll bear in mind if we ever get data that seriously needs recovery on a USB stick.

 

We're constantly reminded by students bringing in USB sticks which have failed in how non-robust they are !.

 

Thanks

[MYK-IT]

I have also had this issue. What I did was to create an exact image of the drive with 'ddrescue' (via Parted Magic), mount the resulting image on a Windows 10 PC with OSFMount and then enter the relevant Bitlocker password when prompted.

 

I think there must have only been a few bad sectors because in this case I was able to successfully access the cloned encrypted drive and copy the data somewhere else. The teacher later found there were a few corrupt PowerPoint files, but everything else seems fine.

 

Just wanted to THANK YOU again @Arthur (as I cannot 'Like' twice!). Worked a treat using 'ddrescue' (after reminding myself how to use Linux) to copy to another physical HDD. Just connected up, entered BitLocker password and can now access the contents.

[Arthur]

Worked a treat using 'ddrescue' (after reminding myself how to use Linux) to copy to another physical HDD. Just connected up, entered BitLocker password and can now access the contents.

That's excellent news!

 

It's a shame BitLocker isn't a bit more resilient when a drive has issues.