BitLocker and External Hard Drive(WD My passport 2TB)

Nicator

New Member
Messages
2
Hello all,

I didn't use my external hard drive for over a month, and today I decided that i wanted a back-up of some of the stuff on my laptop. I plugged it in and immediately a message popped up, saying that this drive was protected by something called BitLocker. It required me to enter a 48 digit recovery key. I had NEVER heard of BitLocker up until that point. I didn't know anything about a recovery key, and why didn't it ask for a regular password first, before asking for a recovery key? I didn't have a clue. I still don't have a clue. I searched my computer for BitLocker using the regular 8.1 system search. No results. I searched in PC Info. There is something about encryption there. That was, and is turned off. Not a mention of BitLocker anywhere. When i looked it up it said it comes with Windows 8.1 Pro or Enterprise edition. I am fairly certain I have regular 8.1. How in the name of all that is holy did I get saddled with this piece of rubbish encryption that locks me from my files, while I don't even want it? When I plugged it into my fathers laptop, also running 8.1 it gave the same message. When i plugged it into my brothers Asus tablet with keyboard combo, also running 8.1, it didn't give any problems. Does anyone here have any clue what is going on? Would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Thank you
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
I'm having the exact same problem. I've been dealing with it for months. Both of my external hard drives had this happen to them at roughly the same time, and I have no idea how. I too had never heard of Bitlocker before this happened. I tried calling WD and they told me to call Microsoft as Bitlocker is owned by Microsoft. I called Microsoft and they told me to talk to WD. I've been led in circles for months and still cannot access my hard drives and the files on them. I do not have the recovery keys and do not know how to get them. I have been searching for answers throughout the internet without any results. I was told that I could reformat them, and that might work, but then I would lose all of my files. I don't have a backup for them because my hard drives were the backups (that's why I had two!). If you have been able to fix this problem, or have any sort of solutions or options, please, please help me out.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1
Yeah. I've accepted the files as being gone. What I did was reformat. So as not to lose both the files and a 110eu harddisk. After the first time it happened again. The second time it worked, no more encryption. Ideally you reinstall Windows before reformatting to make sure no weird settings remain that you are unaware off. You've gone through more trouble than I did, I didn't feel like calling, so you'll probably know more than I do. I just gave up, because it was quite frustrating.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
you may want to hold on to your hard drives.. there may be a solution at some point.. just nobody has googled or read enough yet..

it's not terribly expensive to get more space..

hard drive.JPG
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo g750
    CPU
    i5
    Motherboard
    Some Chinese Crap..
    Memory
    8
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia 755
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
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