More bitlocker concerns

I have been running bitlocker in my W11 beta channel pc and used an M2 ssd for C drive. I have also put together a mostly new pc to run W10 pro until W11 is available to upgrade next month. As I only have the one M2 ssd at present, I thought I would use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to copy the OS onto another 2.5 ssd and format the M2 to use in the new build. The bios can see the M2 but W10 would not load on it, so I used another spare 2.5 ssd sucessfully. The M2 is visible in the bios and device manager, but Mini Tool flags it as a bad disk.
I put the M2 back in the W11 pc and it is seen no problem and I reformatted it and deleted the partition. Back in the W10 pc, it is still a bad disk. Refitting the M2 in the W11pc, I was stopped by the bitlocker code being required. Neither of the codes that I had would work and when I visited my Microsoft account, there were 4 sets of codes. I deleted the ones that did not work and made a note of the 2 new ones. I guessed the correct one first time. The codes were dated strangely, the dates did not make any sense either using the UK or USA date format. Now I am de-encrypting the drives and hope that the M2 will then work in the W10 pc and will be expecting to have to go through the bitlocker code change when the W11 pc has BL switched back on. It seems that formatting and also deleting the partition in the drive still did not render it usable even when done on the original pc.

Interesting. And weird.

Maybe normal, as I don't use BitLocker, so I don't know if having so many different codes like this is normal - but WTF is it changing codes without telling you in the first place?

If that isn't successful:
You say it is visible in device manager on Windows 10. Have you tried formatting it on the Windows 10 system (using Windows disk manager)?

While the M2 is visible in device manager, and deemed to be working properly, it is not seen in "this pc" in the W10 machine and only Mini Tool Partition Manager can see it as a bad disk, but states its capacity. Crystal Disk Info cannot see it either.
I suspect that the bitlocker is a red herring as I have de-encrypted the drives in the W11 machine. I had also set a security in the bios of the W11 machine and cannot disable it. There are 2 passwords needed before booting to Windows.

As the M2 works perfectly in the W11 machine, I suppose it would be easier to keep it there and just buy another M2 for the W10 machine.

I think that the safety requirements for installing W11 to Microsoft's standards are going to cause a lot of headaches to anyone expecting to use a hard drive in any other system.

tinmar49 said:

While the M2 is visible in device manager, and deemed to be working properly, it is not seen in "this pc" in the W10 machine and only Mini Tool Partition Manager can see it as a bad disk, but states its capacity. Crystal Disk Info cannot see it either.
I suspect that the bitlocker is a red herring as I have de-encrypted the drives in the W11 machine. I had also set a security in the bios of the W11 machine and cannot disable it. There are 2 passwords needed before booting to Windows.

As the M2 works perfectly in the W11 machine, I suppose it would be easier to keep it there and just buy another M2 for the W10 machine.

I think that the safety requirements for installing W11 to Microsoft's standards are going to cause a lot of headaches to anyone expecting to use a hard drive in any other system.

Click to expand...

I meant try and format it with Windows diskpart in an elevated command window in the Windows 10 machine, sorry I wasn't clear. It is WDC? Do they have a utility to secure erase the disk? Those are the only options I can think of for you to try.

Unfortunately, the M2 is only visible in the W10 machine in device manager and as a bad disk in Mini Tool Partition Manager.
To add to the problem, I can only use the M2 as a storage disk now in the W11 machine. Although MTPM can format it and clone the other SSD to make a normally bootable C drive, Windows will not start properly using it. I even tried completely removing the encryption before trying to clone it. I am up to 6 bitlocker codes so far.

Is there possible a TPM module involved? I am not that well versed on TPM but I thought it was supposed to keep you from being able to move an encrypted drive from one computer to another.

The AMD firmware TPM is activated, one of the reasons why Microsoft offered me W11 before I could get round to getting hold of the W11 ISO's. The M2 has only ever been used in the W11 pc, and was the C drive until I reduced the C partition to 200Gb to make it easy to clone it to a 240Gb 2.5" SSD. The mystery with putting it back in the W11 machine is why I can't clone it back the other way, but making it a data disk was straightforward with just one partition.
I now have another M2 ordered to go in the W10 machine.

I had another try cloning the M2 to match the 2.5 SSD which is running windows, using Macrium Reflect rather than MTPW after suspending bit locker. It looks the same, but won't complete the boot. The 2.5 SSD is in a front mount caddy and can be switched off while trying to get the M2 running, so its presence is not spoiling things. Fortunately, I can switch the 2.5 drive back to the boot drive and get back up and running.
Soon, the W11 ISO will be available from Microsoft and I will try a clean install.

tinmar49 said:

I had another try cloning the M2 to match the 2.5 SSD which is running windows, using Macrium Reflect rather than MTPW after suspending bit locker. It looks the same, but won't complete the boot. The 2.5 SSD is in a front mount caddy and can be switched off while trying to get the M2 running, so its presence is not spoiling things. Fortunately, I can switch the 2.5 drive back to the boot drive and get back up and running.
Soon, the W11 ISO will be available from Microsoft and I will try a clean install.

Click to expand...

This happens sometimes with cloning. Try booting to the Macrium recovery flash drive and select Fix Windows Boot Problems.

If it helps,

it looks like 22000.194 is the RTM so trying a fresh install with that one may be one way to go - I was first offered it on my Windows 10 Release Preview system two days ago, then offered through Windows Update yesterday, My release Preview channel account is usually a week to a month before the official release of any update/upgrade and the 5th October is approaching fast :)

When I was offered W11 after my W10 beta channel was changed to dev build, the upgrade was direct from Microsoft, there was no ISO that I could use later if required. I fouled things up by not waiting for another M2 drive to be delivered for a new build machine and trying to use the existing M2 which had been successfully cloned to a 2.5 SSD. The M2 was reformatted before removing it from the W11 machine, but it still didn't work as a boot drive in either machine.