A client's laptop unfortunately died, and while they have backups for everything, there are a couple of folders that weren't saved. We now have the drive, and we can connect it to a fully updated Windows 11 Pro 24H2 machine. However, when attempting to unlock the drive, we get an error message saying, "The BitLocker Encryption on this drive isn't compatible with your version of Windows. Try opening the drive using a newer version of Windows."
When we check the status using bde-manage, it shows the drive size as unknown, there is no BitLocker version listed, and the conversion status along with the percentage encrypted also appears as unknown. We then get an error code 0x80070057 indicating that the parameter is incorrect. We suspect that the original machine might have been running Windows 11 Pro 21H2.
We also tried unlocking through the command line using the recovery key from the Azure portal with an empty NTFS drive connected, but that didn't help either. Is there anything else we can do to unlock this drive?
3 Answers
You might want to take a look at this support link from Microsoft. It has some pointers that could help with your situation. Sometimes the issue is resolved by following specific protocols listed there. Just a thought!
Have you tried accessing the drive offline using Microsoft’s DART or WinPE with the BitLocker add-on? That might allow you to Robocopy the data to another drive and bypass some of the issues you're facing now.
It's possible that the drive could be corrupt. This has happened before and can cause major headaches when trying to recover data. Even if it shows up with a BitLocker icon, that doesn't guarantee it's in good condition.
This is exactly my worry with encryption. If even a single byte gets corrupted, recovering any data can be nearly impossible.
How would we even know if it's corrupt? I thought it looked fine since it has the BitLocker icon.