Bitlocker Stuck in Decrypting

I know this is an old post but for the sake of others looking for the answer....

Without knowing what actually caused the decrypt to hang it's hard to say this would work for everyone. In my case everything was fine on a 512GB SSD until a Windows update popped up and asked for a restart. I've seen Bitlocker simply resume after reboots for both encryption and decryption processes so didn't think twice about restarting real quick and carrying on with my work. After restarting however the decryption stuck at 88.9% and wouldn't budge for over an hour. I fussed about a little manually in the Bitlocker Manager GUI, cmd (manage-bde), and with related PowerShell commands with no luck. Finally decided to try pausing the process and resuming it. I was able to pause using "manage-bde -pause c:" , but that seemed to make things worse as it could not resume.

As a thought I decided to try shrinking the volume from Disk Management below the remaining percentage left to decrypt. For me 88% of my 512GB storage was 450GB. My drive partitions out to about 470GB usable so I just took that back about 25GB just under the 450GB I suspected might be needed. After the shrink worked to reduce that size I was able to hit Resume in the GUI of the Bitlocker Manager and it completed with no errors.

Be aware of backing up your important files in case anything fails on you while you can still get to them. I wasn't overly worried on the system I was messing with so I just carried out the above steps figuring worse case I would wipe and fully reinstall.

Hope this info helps others trying to find the same fix.

Mark

I am assuming there is no solution to this problem.

Once the encryption or decryption process has been interrupted, USB drive sectors might be damaged then cause USB drive can’t be used.
I agree with your idea, low level format should be the best practice now, if HDD Low Level Format utility fails, you need to change another low level format utility, please refer to the following article to check Hiren's BootCD.

How to format hard disk or USB at low level in Windows 10 (technowikis.com)
https://technowikis.com/9313/how-to-format-hard-disk-or-usb-at-low-level-in-windows-10#2-format-windows-10-hard-drive-or-usb-using-hirens-bootcd

Finally, you could consult the USB drive seller support, maybe they have some ways to format their product.

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Hi.
Thanks for the reply.
I tried almost everything, from trying to pause, to resume, to leaving it for days on end.
Even tried low level formatting of the device.
Still nothing. (the readonly lock on the device was set, and nothing I did could fix the device)
I did however not even think about shrinking the volume.
I ended up throwing the USB device away sometime last year after giving up, and not receiving any answer on this and other posts I created.
I do have another 2TB external that is bitlocked and working, I use it for work, if I ever do leave my current company I will need to decrypt it, and format it, I am really dreading it failing again.
I have not had much luck with bitlocker and externals (mandatory for drives used for work).
Especially on laptops when they turn off power to the USB ports (stupid work policies I can't change)