Bitlocker URGENT HELP NEEDED!!!

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Fyson

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Yesterday I started to encrypt a practically full 3TB drive with Bitlocker. this morning it was still encrypting at about 30%.

Thanks to eskom my electricity failed for 10 seconds and my UPS decided it was also the perfect time NOT to work.
After I started the PC up again the drive is locked but when I click on unlock and enter the password it sort of freezes.

The blinking cursor where the password was typed in stops blinking and other than that absolutely nothing happens.

I'm not sure if its still encrypting in the background or what is going on.

Shall I just wait another 2 days and see?

My mistake was not backing up before the encryption, but how the hell do you back up 3TB if you don't have another 3TB drive.

[Data Volume]

Size: Unknown GB
BitLocker Version: Windows 7
Conversion Status: Unknown
Percentage Encrypted: Unknown%
Encryption Method: AES 128 with Diffuser
Protection Status: Unknown
Lock Status: Locked
Identification Field: Unknown
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors:
Password
Numerical Password

Can anyone help?
 
Did you make a backup before you started? ;) ;) ;)

Surely the thing even warned you to make a backup?
 
Thank you captain hindsight.

As I said in my original post I should have made a bloody backup but couldn't since the 3TB drive was the biggest I had
 
You dun goofed mate. Whatever was encrypted is more or less gone now. It will literally take you a few million years to decrypt it.
 
Normally you shouldnt encrypt such big drives, maybe if you partitioned it in 6x500GB it would be easier to manage.
 
Fyson said:
Thank you captain hindsight.

As I said in my original post I should have made a bloody backup but couldn't since the 3TB drive was the biggest I had
Click to expand...

Sorry man. If it's any consolation many of us have made similar mistakes in the past and also lost the contents of our hard drives.
You can try a Data Recovery program to see if you can at least salvage part of your stuff, but I don't hold out much hope.
Moral of the story is don't mess around with your primary hard drive without a backup.
Just put it down to a lesson and move on quickly from here.
 
Is your porn collection so special that you need to encrypt it? JOKES!! Sorry bout your loss dude :erm:
 
A data recovery tool may be able to salvage some of the intact data. Whatever was encrypted already is gone however.
 
If memory serves it prompts you to save a recovery key at the start?

I recall something went awry during my encrypt too...don't recall the details but it all got done eventually.
 
That recovery key is absolutely useless if it doesn't want to complete encryption.
But thankfully I managed to get it working.

For future reference, here's what I did:

I have a old junker 250GB hard drive that has a smart failure but its still working fine so far.
I installed windows 7 onto that and then plugged the stuck drive in. It asked me to unlock and encryption continued.
YESSSSS

But I decided to cancel the encryption instead since it would take another 2 days to encrypt and who knows when another power failure might cause it all again.
 
Fyson said:
That recovery key is absolutely useless if it doesn't want to complete encryption.
But thankfully I managed to get it working.

For future reference, here's what I did:

I have a old junker 250GB hard drive that has a smart failure but its still working fine so far.
I installed windows 7 onto that and then plugged the stuck drive in. It asked me to unlock and encryption continued.
YESSSSS

But I decided to cancel the encryption instead since it would take another 2 days to encrypt and who knows when another power failure might cause it all again.
Click to expand...

So you were able to save your data? That's awesome!
 
I once encrypted my harddrive with Truecrypt and the power cut off. When it came back on my entire harddrive was corrupted. Wouldn't even load Windows:(
 
Fyson said:
That recovery key is absolutely useless if it doesn't want to complete encryption.
But thankfully I managed to get it working.

For future reference, here's what I did:

I have a old junker 250GB hard drive that has a smart failure but its still working fine so far.
I installed windows 7 onto that and then plugged the stuck drive in. It asked me to unlock and encryption continued.
YESSSSS

But I decided to cancel the encryption instead since it would take another 2 days to encrypt and who knows when another power failure might cause it all again.
Click to expand...

should i do the same with my partially encrypted hard drive.
 
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