Possible BitLocker encrypted HDD

[arc1880]

I bought a used HDD last month. I tried to use Diskpart on it but I’m not able to create a partition. Diskpart tells me to look at the system events and this is what I get. Any suggestions on what to do?

 

 

[Wh0_Am_1]

Reformat the drive.

 

[Bitter]

If Windows is being...uncooperative...then 'nuke' it with gparted on a bootable USB drive running Linux such as Ubuntu. Then run a disk check on it, it may have bad hardware if it's got bad blocks and could be on it's way out. Take a peep at SMART data before you go any further.

[kirashi]

19 minutes ago, arc1880 said:

I bought a used HDD last month. I tried to use Diskpart on it but I’m not able to create a partition. Diskpart tells me to look at the system events and this is what I get. Any suggestions on what to do?

17 minutes ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Reformat the drive.

This. Reformat the drive, then check SMART diagnostics on it. If you bought the drive used, you can still use it if it's not dead / dying, but consider it bad since you have no way to know if it's been dropped or subjected to any other damage.

 

[arc1880]

It looks like the drive may be encrypted by BitLocker. Also. Those errors occur when I try to format it.

[Pickles von Brine]

Do you need any data off the drive? If you do and it has BitLocker on it then it is not going to be pretty. I have dealt with several in my time as a data recovery engineer. Basically with these kinds of drives you had to do the recovery and prey. BitLocker is a bit by bit encryption so it needs ALL the blocks on the drive. We had tools that could take the password and use it to decrypt the drive. However, if the bad block was in the beginning where the BitLocker started (sorry not really understood myself) then you were basically SOL. 

[TechyBen]

37 minutes ago, Lord Xeb said:

Do you need any data off the drive? If you do and it has BitLocker on it then it is not going to be pretty. I have dealt with several in my time as a data recovery engineer. Basically with these kinds of drives you had to do the recovery and prey. BitLocker is a bit by bit encryption so it needs ALL the blocks on the drive. We had tools that could take the password and use it to decrypt the drive. However, if the bad block was in the beginning where the BitLocker started (sorry not really understood myself) then you were basically SOL. 

It's a used disk, so I would assume the new buyer/owner (OP) only wants to format it. You can do this, *all data is erased!!!*

https://superuser.com/questions/408809/how-to-format-a-drive-encrypted-with-bitlocker

 

Alternatively, what model/brand is it? Sometimes you need to use their own formatting tool (if the drive has firmware/hardware protection built in).

[Pickles von Brine]

If windows is saying it has a bad block then why is he trying to reformat it? My assumption (presumptuous of me) is that he wants something off the drive. 

[TechyBen]

46 minutes ago, Lord Xeb said:

If windows is saying it has a bad block then why is he trying to reformat it? My assumption (presumptuous of me) is that he wants something off the drive. 

It may be failing in formatting because its got bad blocks?

 

It's second hand (read op), it's bitlocker. The OP does *not* want to get the data off it.

 

[arc1880]

I want to just wipe the drive. I don't need anything off of it.

 

What I have tried is I have used diskpart to clean, and create a new partition. But when I try to format it either quick or full format, I get the errors in the system event logs. How would I go about taking care of the bad sector? How would I go about getting around bitlocker?

[Bitter]

Try gparted under Linux, it doesn't care about bitlocker.

[arc1880]

9 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Try gparted under Linux, it doesn't care about bitlocker.

I can run gparted from a USB drive correct? Will gparted help with a way to deal with bad sectors such as just partitioning the bad sector?

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I used to run Bitlocker on all my internal and external drives before I switched over to Veracrypt.  Never had an issue turning bitlocker-encrypted drives back to normal. 

Right-clicking and selecting "format" in Windows Explorer worked just fine, diskpart allows you to clean the drive and create and format a new partition just fine, Gparted can delete the encrypted partition and create and format a new one ...

 

If the system is showing Event ID 7, there really is at least one unreadable block on the drive.  By "unreadable" I don't mean "encrypted", I mean "physically damaged".

I'm no expert on HDD problems, so I can't give you any advice on how to work around this issue.  When a drive starts giving me problems, I simply take it to my local recycling center (I may destroy the platters first if the data on the drive wasn't encrypted, of course) and get another one.

 

As for Gparted, you can indeed run that from a USB drive.  Gparted is included on almost every Linux live installer or you can create a Live USB using Gparted's own image.  Pick whatever works for you.   

[arc1880]

It does seem like I'm hosed with this drive. Too bad, I could have really used the storage.

[Pickles von Brine]

You don't want to use a drive with bad sectors for storage. Those drives are starting to fail and it is bad practice. They just end up getting worse and worse before they fail. If you did, you could have lost data at some point.