Bitlocker-encrypted removable drive won't unlock

[jason_uk]

I have Backup4All 7.4 running on Windows 2008 R2, backing up to a removable USB hard drive which has full-disk bitlocker encryption enabled. In the 'manage bitlocker' settings for the drive, I have turned on 'automatic unlocking for this drive on this computer', and this works fine when I log into the computer. Backup4All is scheduled to run in the standard way with the same (administrator) user that I log on with. But the backup job aborts every time with the error "The data drive specified is not set to automatically unlock on the current computer and cannot be unlocked automatically."

Any ideas how I can get it to unlock the drive automatically? Thanks.

[Adrian (Softland)]

Hi,

Backup4all scheduler runs as a service. It does not login as you do normally.
You need to unlock the drive using a command line before the backup execution, if Bitlocker allows you to do that.

[jason_uk]

Thanks, I've now done this and it's working.

For anyone else who comes across this, I've created a .bat file containing the following (where f: is the drive that has Bitlocker encryption enabled and which needs to be decrypted):

manage-bde.exe -unlock -password "f:"

In the 'Advanced' section of the Backup4All job properties, I have set it to 'Run program or action' and pointed to this batch file. The Backup4All job runs as a user with the appropriate privileges to unlock this drive. And automatic unlock of the drive is enabled.