Bitlocker password and recovery key not working with external drive

Question

This is long but I have looked to provide full detail, in short my Bitlocker password and recovery key don't work - even though my password does work in a 3rd party utility.

Issue

1. I was encrypting an external 2GB SeaGate drive when the power supply to my pc was unplugged.
2. On restart I was unable to access the external drive with the bitlocker password i had just entered - while I found this strange as I knew what the password was - I figured I would just use recovery key.

Password didn't work

It didn't work. Which surprised me as the given the Key ID was clearly the same - see below.

Drive Error

It was noteworthy was that after one false attempt with the right password and right recovery key, an x8007007a error was prompted

This same error had been experienced by other SeaGate users but no solutions were reported. The closest I found was this error that related to a failing drive.

Next steps

Further googling led me to

1. The BitLocker command line tool (password failed to unlock)
2. A utility from M3 Data Recovery

The M3 Data Recovery didn't access initially, but when I unplugged then plugged back in the SeaGate drive (which removed the error message re a drive error), my password did work. But this is only for the first 1GB of files, and I don't need the files badly enough to shell out $200.

From a purist sense I'm surprised that my password work in the utility but not directly, are there reasons for this and is there anything else I can try?

Answer 1

M3 Data Recovery did work for me. I tried everything else but it didn't work. However, Windows has an option of recovering the data (free), but you have to get another external drive large enough to get the data, since it doesn't allow you to save the info on your C drive in operation.