Bitlocker Media is Write Protected

[damurcute]

I acquired a 1gb hard drive which had been replaced after failing. At the time they were pretty pricey so rather than throwing it out, I made an attempt at repairing it, although had no clue what I was doing. I made a mistake at one point which I couldn't figure out how to reverse so was surprised when it worked. I was not surprised to get a warning on boot and a message saying it was about to fail and to immediately after login. These are accurate warning %99 of the time and should never be ignored but it was a bit of fun. I have used it every day for the past 7yrs so no longer notice the alerts and never store anything I can't afford to lose. Again not knowing what I was doing, I decided to try Bitlocker and not thinking encrypted this drive which has made it 'read only'. Adjustments made in Group Policy or TPM seem to make no difference.
Check Disk tells me to repair the drive and I get 'The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR5 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.' Would I be correct in assuming this is preventing Bitlocker from turning off? Anything I can do? If not, can I just reformat over the top of Bitlocker?  BTW I learn by guessing what to do, then reading what I should have done in a forum. So no need to point this out... a bit like guys and road maps before GPS.

[Boggin]

I've never used Bitlocker but is this how you have tried turning it off -

http://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-disable-bitlocker-go-encryption

To determine the status of this HDD, download the 30 day trial version of HDSentinel which will give you a written report for it when it's plugged in, as well as for your internal HDD/SSD.

Hit the green button - http://www.hdsentinel.com/

[damurcute]

Yes the same as your link, I select the drive, right click then select Manage Bitlocker then select 'Turn Off Bitlocker' I get a msg asking if I want to turn it off. When I select OK I get 'The media is write protected' instead of 'Your drive will be decrypted' etc.
Sentinel says Performance Excellent 100%  Health 0% Failure predicted.  Power on Time 1256 days Estimated remaining time 0 days. The text says
Failure Predicted - Attribute: 5 Reallocated Sectors Count, Count of sectors moved to the spare area. Indicate problem with the disk surface or the read/write heads.
There are 1960 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
Based on the number of remapping operations, the health of the disk was decreased in different steps.
There are 5 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk.
Replace hard disk immediately.  Failure Predicted - Attribute: 5 Reallocated Sectors Count, Count of sectors moved to the spare area. Indicate problem with the disk surface or the read/write heads.
There are 1960 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
Based on the number of remapping operations, the health of the disk was decreased in different steps.
There are 5 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk.
Replace hard disk immediately.  5,Reallocated Sectors Count,5,2,2,Pre-Failure: Data loss predicted,0000000007A8,0,Enabled
This is exactly what the Sentinel report said 6yrs ago. Its a shame Bitlocker didn't throw the error message before it encrypted it.

[Boggin]

Run a chkdsk /r on it - that should give what it has, although I had HDSentinel report 5 weak sectors on my HDD and a chkdsk /f reported 18 KB in bad sectors, but after restoring with a system image, HDSentinel was reporting 100% for Performance and Health and a subsequent chkdsk /f didn't show any errors either.

As hardware trumps software every time - or at least I thought so, I don't know what had occurred for both to produce the errors they did.

Whatever occurred for me may be the same for you as a failing HDD would certainly not last 7 years and counting when in regular use.

As you don't have anything of import on the HDD, then a format may just sort it out.

I don't know if you are going to do a quick or full format but I did a full format on a 1TB external HDD and it took about 18 hours.

[damurcute]

18 HOURS?? Oh my gosh. I will probably get trigger happy waiting that long and press cancel. However would be worth it to get rid of the boot error message. I doubt a quick format will do the trick so 18hrs it is. When I first got the 0 days to live message and the drive was still working after a few days, I started rooting for it to keep going. After a year I felt quite proud that it had 'beaten the odds'. I really need to get out more!!!! Thanks for the advice Hero Member Boggin.

[Boggin]

Before you start the marathon, check the contacts on both ends of the data cable as they can oxidize which could be why the message.

The power cable may be fine, but it's worth checking all connections.

The full format should tell you if it has found any bad sectors it has roped off from being used, but as it has been in use this long, it may be down to physical factors like its connections.

Forgot to add, if you do need to full format, ensure you choose NTFS.

BTW - The Hero Member bit comes about because of the number of posts - not how helpful they may have been