Bitlocker and HDD failure

[Z4_Zain]

Your Help Can Save My Life

I have a 1TB HDD with two partitions: D and E. I enabled BitLocker on my E drive because the data in my E drive is very important to me.

Before installing Windows 11, I started decrypting the E drive, but the process got stuck at 45%. I assumed that reinstalling Windows would remove BitLocker, so I ignored it and proceeded with the installation.

After successfully reinstalling Windows 11, I noticed that my E drive was unlocked and had no BitLocker protection. However, I saw a notification saying:
“Decryption is in progress (E:).”

When I clicked on it, it showed the decryption was still stuck at 45%. I waited for it to complete, but it never did. Since BitLocker was not showing on my E drive, I ignored the issue.

Two days later, my HDD health dropped to 9%. I attempted to back up my important data, but every time I tried to open my D or E drive, my system froze, and File Explorer became unresponsive.

If I managed to enter the drive and transfer data from HDD to SSD, the transfer speed was only 100 KB/s, and after transferring just 3 MB, the HDD would freeze again.

Now, when I try to open my E drive in Kali Linux, it says:
“A passphrase is needed to access encrypted data.”

I entered the correct BitLocker password, but it says “Invalid password.” I have tried all the passwords I’ve ever used in my life, but nothing worked. I don’t have the recovery key.

Things I Have Tried (But Didn’t Work):

Using CMD commands to pause/resume BitLocker decryption

Safe mode and third-party applications like TeraCopy

Dislocker in Kali Linux (failed to mount the encrypted partition)

Microsoft and Lenovo customer support (no solution)

Various YouTube tutorials

I have been dealing with this issue for five days and am extremely stressed. I have a high fever due to the anxiety this problem has caused. I don’t want to lose my data.

Please help me! Your support could save my life.

[Fred]

When decrypting it likely wasn’t ‘stuck’ at 45% it was just going to take a while and would have sat at 45% for hours, decryption isn’t a quick process, however as you didn’t let it finish, the data may be garbled on disk.

I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have probably ‘lost’ your encrypted data…

There are some tools which may help you recover the drive as it was, and you may then be able to decrypt it with your passcode (you’ll need another drive to write the data to first)

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/97390-use-bitlocker-repair-tool-recover-encrypted-drive-windows.html

This is why data backups are important, as they say, any data you don’t have a working backup copy of, is data that you don’t mind losing…