Bitlocker crashing during initial encryption

[TheDoc46]

Hi,

New drive 1gb external, running bitlocker for the first time. Left it overnight cos it was taking forever, (which is the norm)

Woke up this morning and it was stuck on something like 47.1% requesting the bitlocker password, put that in and it starts encrypting again.... But every few random mins it falls over with an error message:

An Error Occurred The System cannot find the file specified.

And prompts me to put my bitlocker password back in, for which I do, and the encrpytion starts again.

Its like at 50% now, after it falling over 3 times in the last 30mins....

I'm not exactly what to do.. I cant sit here for the next 10hrs waiting for it to fall over every few mins asking for the password.

I'd be up for scrapping the whole encrpytion and starting all over again.. But not exactly sure on how to permantely un-crypt the drive and reformat it ? Perhaps running a scandisk before doing so... It was a brand new drive.

I can actually still access the data, because autoplay opens after every error allowing me to see and open the files.

Any suggestions ?

 

[richnrockville]

TheDoc46, my recommendation is a complete format of the drive. Remove the partitions and then re-create them and then format completely.

Best not to use Bitlocker on an external drive as it is worthless to any other computer due to the encryption technique. Also there are private encryption programs that are just as good like Free Encryption Software - Password Protect Files and Lock Folders


I bought their pro version which I really like, no financial connection, just a satisfied user.

Rich

 

[TheDoc46]

Well i went ahead and formatted the drive. I think i'll just try again.. But perhaps running bitlocker before adding any data, rather than running bitlocker after putting the data on.

I'm also changing the USB selective suspend setting in power options to disabled. Maybe it was trying to suspend the device given the amount of time it was left on for, which sent it on a downward spiral ?

Who knows.

I'll try again.

 

[TheDoc46]

TheDoc46, my recommendation is a complete format of the drive. Remove the partitions and then re-create them and then format completely.

Best not to use Bitlocker on an external drive as it is worthless to any other computer due to the encryption technique. Also there are private encryption programs that are just as good like Free Encryption Software - Password Protect Files and Lock Folders


I bought their pro version which I really like, no financial connection, just a satisfied user.

Rich

Thanks, however I do have to disagree on your bitlocker comments. I have another drive with it protected, and everytime i plug it into any other Windows 7 machine, i have to unlock it before i can access the data. I guess its just an extra layer of protection for me if i lose the drive somehow.. But on any machine, even non ultimate Win7 builds, and actually even Vista I 'think' it'll ask for the p/w before giving access to the drive. I find it pretty handy.

 

[TheDoc46]

One other thing I'm discovering (for the aid of others) is that the drive i'm using was a USB3.0 in a USB3.0 port. My understanding is that this is potentially problematic for bitlocker. Microsoft recommend that you use a USB2.0 port for bitlocker.

Seems silly to me, but if its straight from the horses mouth, then i'd say that's probably why it wasn't working !

 

[stebobibo]

I was skeptical at first about the USB 2.0 solution, but I tried it and it worked! Thanks, Doc!

I was having almost identical problems as you. First, the process would stop and wait for me to put in a password randomly multiple times. Then I got the "An Error Occurred The System cannot find the file specified" message, but when that happened to me, I had to unplug and then replug the device in to get it going again, but shortly after it would crash again.

Using the USB 2.0 port solved both those problems and the Bitlocker process went smoothly thereafter. The only problem is that USB 2.0 is soooo much slower than 3.0 and it took me roughly 18 hours to encrypt a 1TB external drive!