Bitlocker Drive Encryption Help

smr · 22 Jan 2025 at 12:33

I have a bitlocker encrypted drive I'm trying to format and I've run out of ideas as to why I cannot reinstall Windows on it.

I don't need to save any data on it. I've run hirens boot cd and can see the hard drive. It's an NVME SSD, so functionally it is working.

Windows however, refuses to acknowledge it despite the fact that I have formatted the drive in live cd and then used disk management to format the drive and easeus. All of them format teh drive and can create a new volume fine so you'd think I could then reboot with a Windows USB and select the drive to install Windows on, but at the Windows Setup screen where the hard drives in the machine are supposed to be visible it's completely blank.

Also, in Windows in Command, if I go into diskpart and list disk it isn't visible, just the bootable USB.

I'm a tech and it's got me stumped. I know the bios settings are ok as when I plug my own SSD in via USB it recognises that drive.

Any help much appreciated.

SupraWez · 22 Jan 2025 at 12:41

If you have a linux live CD you could try something like :-

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=100

Run it a couple times to be sure and the disk should then appear as new and uninitialized, obviously change /dev/sda to the disk you trying to wipe/kill, lsblk should show them or fdisk etc.

andshrew · 22 Jan 2025 at 14:12

Is this not a case that the Windows installer is simply missing drivers for your storage controller and so you need to load them from USB first? (download from motherboard manufactures web site).

LostCorpse · 22 Jan 2025 at 15:03

sounds indeed like your missing the device driver for windows media to be able to access it.
you'll need to check which chipset driver your system is using and/or try chaning the storage type to sata in place of raid

CrimsonAvenger · 22 Jan 2025 at 16:46

As the last 2 comments. Seems you are missing device drivers to enable Windows to see your storage.

Mujja · 26 Jan 2025 at 15:05

smr said:
Also, in Windows in Command, if I go into diskpart and list disk it isn't visible, just the bootable USB.

I'm a tech and it's got me stumped. I know the bios settings are ok as when I plug my own SSD in via USB it recognises that drive.

Any help much appreciated.

During Windows setup, you open a CMD window, run Diskpart and one SSD can be seen and another cannot? They are both connected to the exact same SATA port?

smr · 11 May 2025 at 13:33

thanks all and if anyone has the same thing it is indeed the rapid storage technology driver

tangey · 9 Jun 2025 at 17:19

I have a similar problem. In my case, moving an NVme from a 2yr old acer to a brand new acer (to save me having to install loads of stuff), windows on trying to boot comes up with "boot drive inaccessible". Trying used a cloned Nvme (using macrium) cloning to another Nvme, same problem. TRied doing it by saving an image of the old laptop and then restoring to the new laptop, same problem.

None of the windows recover tools work, basically because they can't see the boot drive

Not running bitlocker on either old or new laptop. Disabled secure boot on the new laptop. The old laptop didn't have the win 11 update 2 done, whereas the new one does.

Is it possible that the new laptop has a chipset that the old one does not, meaning win11 installation from the old laptop can't access the drives on the new laptop, and if so, is there anyway round this issue ?

Before starting anything I kept a clone of the Nvme on the new laptop to ensure that I could always go back how it was out of the box.