Cannot re-enable Bitlocker after formatting external drive

Question

Had BL running on an external drive. I had to format the drive because it was acting up and now I can no longer get BL to run. I get a message that refers to "bands not being enumerated." Cannot get it to encrypt again with BL .Lots of suggestions out on the internet but none so far seem to work. I'm fine wiping the drive clean since I already formatted it. The drive is visible in Windows Explorer and from a CMD screen as a regular drive, as well as under "Manage Bitlocker" under Bitlocker To Go (but cannot enable). From a CMD prompt it does appear as a disk and the volume info says "healthy." Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Hello,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

To resolve this issue, please kindly try below steps:

1.Open CMD window as administrator and run below commands to clear the data inside.

a.diskpart

b.list disk

c.select disk x

(To select the issued disk)

d.clean

(To clean data)

e.convert mbr

(To convert disk to mbr type)

f.create partition primary

(To create a new primary partition)

g.format fs=ntfs quick

(Format the new partition with NTFS file system)

h.assign

i.exit

2.Try to enable bitlocker via PowerShell command:

Enable-BitLocker -MountPoint "X:" -EncryptionMethod XtsAes128

3.Open CMD window as administrator and run below commands to clear BitLocker metadata

a.manage-bde -status

b.manage-bde -off X:

c.manage-bde -protectors -delete X:

Try enabling BitLocker again.

REF: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/manage-bde

To help other customers who may be facing the same issue, please don't forget to vote if the reply is helpful.

Best Regards

Zunhui