Question External drive with Bitlocker stuck on decryption

[Martlin]

Hello! I have an external hard drive with Bitlocker encryption. My plan was to remove encryption completely using cmd.



During the process of removing the encryption something happened and the process failed. I had to unplug the hard drive.



Now, the problem is that when I plug in the hard drive the drive is still encrypted and when I unlock it the decryption gets stuck at 70,4% and I get an error message saying that there is a problem with the drive (E: ).



I can see some files and maps in the drive but when I try to open something the whole computer freezes and not responding until I unplug the drive.



Is there something I can do to save my files or is it broken and beyond saving?



Thanks in advance!

 

[USAFRet]

Is there something I can do to save my files or is it broken and beyond saving?

This is specifically what backups are for.
Your data should never ever live on a single device.

During the process of removing the encryption something happened and the process failed. I had to unplug the hard drive.

Now, the problem is that when I plug in the hard drive the drive is still encrypted and when I unlock it the decryption gets stuck at 70,4% and I get an error message saying that there is a problem with the drive

This may be a physical fault with the drive.
But with BL in the mix, likely your data is gone.

 

[Grobe]

I wonder if that "no respond" behavior could be a result of a massive amount of re-writing all the data over again combined with a SMR hard drive here ?
Maybe, just maybe this would have went fine if you let this process last for a day - I've always avoided any purchase of smr drives so I have no experience on the expected time scale myself.

 

[USAFRet]

Maybe, just maybe this would have went fine if you let this process last for a day

Yep.
Interrupting a process like this partway through is never a good idea.

 

[Martlin]

It actually solved the problem by leting the process run. 70,4% went to 100% after some hours. I could save the files that didnt have backup. Still some problems with copying from the drive but everything is fine now.

I have made backups of everything on three different places now and will not use the old hard drive anymore.

Thanks for the tips.