I badly used Dislocker on my encrypted external drive : now Windows wants me to format it

imthelowestintheroom · 05-08-2020, 06:41 AM

Hello,

I've got a 1TB external drive in NTFS encrypted with Bitlocker.
I wanted to open it in Linux (Mint), so I quickly followed a tutorial like a real noob, not understanding how it worked, just pasting lines in the terminal.

1. I plugged my USB drive to the computer

2. I installed Dislocker

3.

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/bitlocker
sudo mkdir /media/mount

4.

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

5.

Code:

sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/thedrive -uMyPassword -- /media/bitlocker

And after that it told me something like batch invalid. I don't remember actually.

The thing is, when I plugged my drive in another computer with Windows, it directly prompted me to format my drive. And so it did on the other computer with Windows I tried.

I'm stupid I wanted to go too fast as a beginner. And I have a lot of important data on that drive.

I did some researches on solutions.
I found some things about repairing the MBR with TestDisk (that I installed in case). And other things.
But I couldn't find a solution that was exactly about my problem (with dislocker I guess), so I prefer to ask on a forum with people who could understand it before doing anything.

My goal is to repair my drive, and be able to fully decrypt it on a Windows computer (what I should have done first)

Can someone explain me why I screwed my drive, and what I can make to repair it?

Thank you, a lot. (:

sxy · 05-08-2020, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by imthelowestintheroom

The thing is, when I plugged my drive in another computer with Windows, it directly prompted me to format my drive. And so it did on the other computer with Windows I tried.

BitLocker is not available on Windows Home edition, are those computers you mentioned above all Home editions? If yes, you can try decrypting your drive on a computer with Pro/Enterprise/Education edition of Windows and see what happens.