Corrupt Bitlocker Virtual Drive in E drive after crash on C drive

MikeinGA 0 Reputation points
2023-01-28T22:53:12.3833333+00:00

My main drive is C which is SSD. My secondary SATA drive is E which held a virtual drive F that was protected with bitlocker.

Two days ago while I was surfing the web, my C drive crashed. Just shut down expectantly and I had to purchase a new SSD to replace the the bad one.

After reinstalling Windows on the new C drive, I can see the old E drive and the file name for the virtual device on it. It had no extension, so I gave it one and attempted to mount it and again work with it.

I cannot mount the virtual drive to unlock it, I get a "the disk image file is corrupted" error. The rest of the E disk works fine. When I bitlocked the encrypted virtual drive, I saved a recovery on a removable device and I know the PW.

Can anything be done to recover the corrupt virtual bitlocked drive?

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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  1. Dave Patrick 426.1K Reputation points MVP
    2023-01-28T23:12:54.25+00:00

    Try finding it listed here to manage the key

    Control Panel\System and Security\BitLocker Drive Encryption

    --please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

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  2. MikeinGA 0 Reputation points
    2023-01-28T23:54:21.38+00:00

    Bitlocker shows C and E as not being encrypted, the virtual drive F does not show since I cannot mount it due to corruption.

  3. MikeinGA 0 Reputation points
    2023-01-30T18:33:50.4166667+00:00

    Well, I actually got the files back but it was an odd turn of events. I had downloaded every program I could in an attempt to recover the VHD file that would not mount. None would work, all of them evaluated the file and said that it was severely corrupt and could not be saved. At that point I just gave up and just wanted to start with a fresh second drive in my system.

    I thought it best to just back up the entire drive and format it. As I was saving the entire drive contents, I noticed that one of the folders being saved was the VHD I had lost, but it was an earlier file name. After using this folder/drive, I wanted to change the description, and it had worked flawlessly with that new name until my C drive got corrupted and I lost the ability to mount it.

    Anyway, the entire contents of the backup of the physical drive I checked the VHD that was saved. Sure enough, I could mount it to my system and all my files were there.

    Odd but happy! Maybe these notes will help someone else......

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