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I recently bought a laptop from Dell with pre-installed Windows 10 Pro. As i'm used to, i shrank the default Windows partition, created another (NTFS) for my data and then installed Ubuntu (18.04) into the remaining space.

However after installation i found that i can't mount the user data NTFS partition. It doesn't appear in the graphical file manager and running sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda4 /media/UserData results in error:

NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sd4': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sd4' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.

After a hour of googling and analyzing the problem, i found that it's because the partitions created by Windows are encrypted by BitLocker and therefore standard Ubuntu drivers can't recognize it. I learned that there are tools like Dislocker or bdemount that can mount the BitLocker encrypted partitions, but they require an encryption key.

However i don't have any such key as i didn't setup the encryption by myself, it came enabled from the factory settings. So i went to Windows and opened the BitLocker manager, but to my confusion it showed me it's not activated. enter image description here However thanks to this Q&A i learned that even when not activated, it is still encrypting, just not storing the key in a secure way.

Now i'm stuck at the point, where i need to extract the encryption key that i can then supply to the Linux mounting tools, but i can't find how or where the key is. Windows seem to require me to activate the BitLocker and setup a password or USB key drive, which i don't want, because then i will have to enter the password or insert the USB disk everytime on boot.

So my (hopefully) final question is: How does one extract the encryption key from Windows BitLocker, that can be then supplied to Linux mounting tools? Windows official documentation doesn't state anything about the key location or how to get it.

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  • Your screenshot indicates encryption, is simply suspended, which means the data is still encrypted. So the solution to your problem is to "Turn on Bitlocker" then go through the process of decrypting the entire HDD. In your case, the key is currently stored in the TPM, Linux tool should be able to access it. Might be easier to just disable BitLocker in your case, since you want to use Linux, and honestly LInux does a horrible job with Bitlocker.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 20, 2018 at 17:57
  • @Ramhound: May i ask you to explain me, what is the difference between the "suspended" encryption i have now and the "activated" encryption i get when i click on Turn on BitLocker and finish the process? I'm very confused from all this drive encryption stuff, never used it before.
    – Youda008
    Sep 20, 2018 at 18:56
  • Do you need/want the data volume encrypted?
    – I say Reinstate Monica
    Sep 20, 2018 at 19:39
  • Well first i liked that idea of additional security by the encryption, but the more i read about it and about people having issues with it, the more i'm thinking about actually disabling the encryption for the user data. If i at least knew how reliable is the Dislocker and how much troubles i will have with using BitLocker encrypted partition in Ubuntu, that would help me with deciding.
    – Youda008
    Sep 20, 2018 at 20:09
  • How BitLocker works, and what it means to suspend it, is well documented but way to complex to explain in a comment. Likewise, I have no idea if the Linux BitLocker tools can communicate with the TPM and get the BitLocker key stored there. Solution is simple, resume BitLocker, then turn BitLocker off. This will decrypt all data, you can then enable it again, when you know more or can verify the tool will work with a TPM (since your not willing to use the alternative by not using the TPM)
    – Ramhound
    Sep 20, 2018 at 21:42

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