Swapping bitlocker system drive to another laptop

cdubaz · 05 Dec 2013

I've read all the bitlocker information and posts but think I've missed something. I have a Dell Latitude E6420 laptop, in the domain, bitlockered. The laptop case has problems so I want to take the HDD out and put it in another E6420 so the user has no down time while her laptop is repaired. Both laptops have hard drives and are bitlockered. First I suspended bitlocker on both laptops. I then swapped the drives. It comes up to repair. I run repair but it cannot repair and shuts down. I put the hard drives back in the original laptops, booted up, turned OFF bitlocker and waited for decryption. When finished, I again swapped the drives. Same issue. What am I doing wrong?

richnrockville · 08 Dec 2013

cdubaz, sorry I am not a bitlocker person but something tells me that you will have problems swapping drives with bitlocker
enabled. I would make a really good backup before you swap the drives. I am not 100% sure but believe that bitlocker uses
some the system checkpoints for part of it's encryption so that people can't decrypt stolen drives..

Rich

cdubaz · 09 Dec 2013

As I mentioned in my previous post, I first tried swapping them with the bitlocker disabled--which is what I've read needs to be done. That did not work so I turned OFF bitlocker on both laptops and decrypted the drives on both laptops.

I'm pretty familiar with Bitlocker but havnen't had the need to swap drives before. Has anyone have any experience with this? Each time, both ways I try it, the laptop wants to run repair and then fails so that I cannot boot.