Encrypted Removable Media Issues in Windows

Windows 7 and Vista include a full disk encryption feature, called BitLocker Drive Encryption, that allows you to protect your data by encrypting the entire volumes. The latest version of Bitlocker included in Windows 7 comes ship with an added functionality of encrypting the removable media such as a USB flash drive, memory stick or digital storage media cards like SD cards. But when you encrypt the removable media that is formatted to FAT file system in Windows 7 and try to use in a digital camera or a system using Windows other than Windows 7, you might experience that the media is not accessible. One of the possible ways to solve such problem is to reformat the removable media and restore lost digital files using backup. But when no valid backup is available, you need to use Digital Photo Recovery solutions to effectively restore the lost photos, videos and audios.

To illustrate this, consider that you are using a FAT formatted USB flash drive, memory stick or digital storage media cards like SD card. You encrypt the media using BitLocker Drive Encryption of Windows. The next time, you observe one of the below symptoms:

You connect the encrypted USB flash drive, memory stick or SD card to a digital camera, a mobile phone or a MP3 player and find that media fails to work

You connect the encrypted USB flash drive, memory stick or SD card with a Windows Vista or XP based system and observe that you cannot write any data to it. The media shows that there is no free space available and its file system is FAT32

Cause

Windows 7 creates a discovery volume formatted to FAT32 file system on space that is invisible and virtualized in Windows 7. When you connect it a system using Windows other than Windows 7, the system detects FAT32 discovery volume and the original bitlocked volume becomes invisible. Thus, system recognizes media with FAT32 file system. Such issues typically occur if the device accessing it requires FAT file system and not FAT32.

Solution

Possible way outs of solving the issue are:

Use Windows 7 to decrypt the removable media
Reformat the removable media with FAT file system and restore from backup. If no clean data backup can be accessed, you should use Photo Recovery tools for recovering lost data. These are powerful Digital Photo Recovery tools competent to recover lost files and folders, while maintaining their integrity

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery is a comprehensive product to recover lost digital data from camera, USB flash drives, media cards and hard drives. It is a safe Photo Recovery tool that supports all camera, audio and video file formats. The tool is available for Windows (Windows Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000) and Mac (Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard, 10.4.x Tiger, 10.3.9 Panther).

Article By Shaun Pattrik