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Bitlocker failed decrypting drive and now is locked.


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Hello!

 

As the title says...I was in the process of decrypting my 32gb usb drive to format and copy new files but at 90% the process stopped, the drive disappeared and appeared again on the explorer with the little padlock still on and asked me for my password which I promptly typed and now it shows this message.

lgj6.jpg

I've read several guides on the web about how to recover the drive...but with no success...the recovery key doesn't work either...I type the code and even when it says is ok, is unable to complete the process due to offset differences and the key been incorrect...but it's the one bitlocker generated when I encrypted the drive!

Now I'm stuck...I don't care about the info on the drive. I just want to be able to format the usb! I tried hiren's boot tools and linux gparted but the result is the same...I can see the encrypted files inside the drive (on linux) but I can't delete them because they're write protected.

Anybody has encounter this type of error before? Most of the guides I find talk about getting the info back but not much about how to format the encrypted usb.

Please help, I just bought this new usb drive a couple of weeks ago and I don't want to lose it.

 

I'm using windows 7 ultimate X64.

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Depending on the options you selected with DBAN, an hour is nothing. ;) I seem to remember leaving one setup running for about 24 hours. :laugh:

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24 hours? omg, how big was the drive? I guess I'll leave it working while I'm at the office and see if something happens in a few hours.

Well that's my point, it wasn't about the size of the drive really, it was more about the settings that I told DBAN to use to make sure the information was well and truly destroyed. This was before I knew how pointless it was. :laugh:
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I deal with Bitlocker encrypted computers on a daily basis and I've never ran into issues formatting them or any external devices. It sounds like there might be something physically wrong with the drive now. What is the brand/model of the flash drive?

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I deal with Bitlocker encrypted computers on a daily basis and I've never ran into issues formatting them or any external devices.

This is what I found confusing. Bitlocker encrypts the drive but it doesn't stop you from erasing the drive, just from accessing the information without the PIN.
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well its possible that the memory cells have run out of erase cycles so its become write protected since it is a usb memory stick.  or you could try googling about removing write protection from usb memory sticks.

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Usually Diskpart Clean fixes this sort of stuff.

 

Open a command prompt as admin

 

> diskpart

> list disk

> > find out what the ID is of the disk you want to erase, let's assume it's 2.

> select disk 2 (or whatever id you have)

> clean

 

That should wipe all of the partition table information and allow you to format it.

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It's a 32gb Kingston datatraveler 100g3 usb3.0. I bought this usb a couple of weeks ago to replace my old 2.0 16gb, everything was working fine until I tried to decrypt the drive. I just tried dban and it doesn't recognized the drive anymore, but if I use ubuntu I can access the drive and see lots of bitlocker files inside and the read only warning on gparted. Also...when checking the drive, if shows the boot sector and mft are different..one shows fat32 and the other says ntfs...

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It's a 32gb Kingston datatraveler 100g3 usb3.0. I bought this usb a couple of weeks ago to replace my old 2.0 16gb, everything was working fine until I tried to decrypt the drive. I just tried dban and it doesn't recognized the drive anymore, but if I use ubuntu I can access the drive and see lots of bitlocker files inside and the read only warning on gparted. Also...when checking the drive, if shows the boot sector and mft are different..one shows fat32 and the other says ntfs...

can't you just go to disk management, erase all the partitions and create a new one?

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Bitlocker should only encrypt the USB drive, if you right click \ Format the USB it should format the drive. If not on your computer then maybe try someone elses?

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Before doing clean (and after doing select disk 5), try this:

 

attributes disk clear readonly

 

(and make sure to run cmd as administrator)

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Not sure what guides you've read so far; gives these two guides a spin. They're at Windows 8 Forums.

 

BitLocker Repair Tool - Recover Drive in Windows 7 and 8

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/21714-bitlocker-repair-tool-recover-drive-windows-7-8-a.html

 

Windows 7: BitLocker Drive Encryption - Unlock a Locked Data or Removable Drive

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/210071-bitlocker-drive-encryption-unlock-locked-data-removable-drive.html

 

Note: If you don't care about the data on the drive, go straight to the second guide. Then try formatting after successfully completing the second guide.

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cxop.jpg

 

 

 

Tried those too...problem is...drive doesn't accept the password nor the recovery key...I'm going to take it back to the store, maybe I have a faulty unit.

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the disk is read only: can't you, in diskpart, use att disk clear readonly, to clear the read only flag?

 

edit: oh you just tried that; it seems that the drive is bad.

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Before returning the drive, give this solution a whirl. Wouldn't hurt to try at this point.

 

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/flash-drive-writeprotected-format/

 

 

Maybe the write protection of USB devices has been changed in the registry.

Try undoing that.
Hit regedit into the run command,Windows+r, to go to the registry editor.

 

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlStorageDevicePolicies

If this key does not exist, create one called StorageDevicePolicies. Select the key afterwards and right-click into the right window. Select New > Dword (32-bit) Value from the context menu and name the entry WriteProtect. Double-click the new entry afterwards and change the value from 0 to 1. A value of 1 disables writing to all connected USB devices. If you want to enable writing again you need to change the value of the key to 0.

 

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Since it seems to have crashed during the decrypt and now the problems your having try to clear it - its does kind of point to an issue with the device.

I would return it.

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Thank you for all the answers, in the end I decided to return the drive to the store because nothing seems to work (now I have to wait until their tech support evaluates the drive). At least I learned new things while trying to save the usb.  :) 

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