I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
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@prism @simonzerafa BitLocker is enabled by default when installing Windows 10 and newer if the computer has a working TPM (this basically means every Windows 11 machine), however it'll remain in suspended state (meaning no key is needed to decrypt) until you log in to a Microsoft account (or AD, but that's not important here). Once you log in to Microsoft account (this applies to free accounts), your recovery key is backed up there and BitLocker is enabled, but thanks to TPM, the drive gets unlocked automatically, so you don't notice anything – until the moment Microsoft's updates break this automatic decryption, and you're welcomed with the recovery key entry at bootup (which only happened twice this year).
On Windows Home this is also the only official way to enable BitLocker, however you can do it manually by using the manage-bde.exe command-line utility (which you can also use to display your recovery key – run
manage-bde -protectors -get C:from elevated command prompt to get the recovery key, it's the long number under Password).@jernej__s @simonzerafa JFC this is terrifying. Thank you.
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@norad Yeah all great questions. I have no idea, I've never seen that error before. I guess I should be thanking my lucky stars it didn't just say "error code 0X80535455" and expect me to google their knowledge base for it. Though I'm still gonna have to do that anyway.
@prism Too relatable, and then you find one post and some idiot microsoft MVP says "did you try sfc/scannow" bs
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@prism Interesting, I didn't know that. So you have something still, good. But all that data, is it really unrecoverable now? Hmm.
@wing_of_eternity It's not in OneDrive and it's not in the folder. There is a shadow copy that carries indexes to the files, but it will not restore the files themselves. That's what I know so far.
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@BrailleScreen @prism @kimcrawley It's a lot better now, especially if you take advantage of AI to help you manage your system, make little helper software, etc. I don't know Nix yet happily daily NixOS this way and have been for 3 months. As I always put it to people who ask me why I switched, I'd rather use my own vibe coded OS rather than Microsoft's. Still loads better of an option than Windows
@Mudb0y @BrailleScreen @kimcrawley Please don't start the AI linux discussion here this thread is long enough as it is.
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Not everyone uses a Microsoft account, many use a Local account and selectively enable whatever services are required or even wanted.
@simonzerafa @prism With a local account, BitLocker remains suspended. The disk's still encrypted, but the decryption key is available in plain-text on the disk itself (this will cause you problems if you try to access the files from Linux, as it'll only see the BitLocker-encrypted data, but at least dislocker can mount the partition, so you can then access it).
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@prism Too relatable, and then you find one post and some idiot microsoft MVP says "did you try sfc/scannow" bs
@prism Also, perhaps a stupid question, but this happened when you tried to export files right? Did you also try exporting on an external (e.g. USB) drive? Preferably on some filesystem like exfat where metadata almost "doesn't exist" ?
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism @davidgerard That is so fucked up. You have my sympathy.
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@jernej__s @simonzerafa JFC this is terrifying. Thank you.
@prism @simonzerafa Run
manage-bde -off C:to decrypt the drive and turn off BitLocker completely. -
@prism Also, perhaps a stupid question, but this happened when you tried to export files right? Did you also try exporting on an external (e.g. USB) drive? Preferably on some filesystem like exfat where metadata almost "doesn't exist" ?
@norad This is on my system SSD drive, which is NTFS. I'm not exporting as such, just... opening them. I found the shadow copy under previous versions in the directory properties. I assume if I copied the folder it would copy just the files that are currently there and not the shadow copy?
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism @blakespot I bought a new PC that has Win11 installed and I had to hunt to find a way to activate it without having to create a Microsoft account. It keeps pestering me that I have “one more step” remaining on my setup and that is activating OneDrive. Nothing has caused me to hate Microsoft more than Win11.
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@norad This is on my system SSD drive, which is NTFS. I'm not exporting as such, just... opening them. I found the shadow copy under previous versions in the directory properties. I assume if I copied the folder it would copy just the files that are currently there and not the shadow copy?
@prism Indeed, the shadow copy would "stay at the same location" so to speak. It's been so long since I used that program so my memory is vague on that, and I never used it for your use case either...
I always only used the export option (for the 2-3 times I had to use that program) -
@prism Indeed, the shadow copy would "stay at the same location" so to speak. It's been so long since I used that program so my memory is vague on that, and I never used it for your use case either...
I always only used the export option (for the 2-3 times I had to use that program)@norad What's the program? I am just using file explorer.
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
@prism
I tried to work offline once with the $DAYJOB laptop. Most of the files I needed that day were OneDrive only... What a usability nightmare. -
@norad What's the program? I am just using file explorer.
@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.
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@prism @simonzerafa BitLocker is enabled by default when installing Windows 10 and newer if the computer has a working TPM (this basically means every Windows 11 machine), however it'll remain in suspended state (meaning no key is needed to decrypt) until you log in to a Microsoft account (or AD, but that's not important here). Once you log in to Microsoft account (this applies to free accounts), your recovery key is backed up there and BitLocker is enabled, but thanks to TPM, the drive gets unlocked automatically, so you don't notice anything – until the moment Microsoft's updates break this automatic decryption, and you're welcomed with the recovery key entry at bootup (which only happened twice this year).
On Windows Home this is also the only official way to enable BitLocker, however you can do it manually by using the manage-bde.exe command-line utility (which you can also use to display your recovery key – run
manage-bde -protectors -get C:from elevated command prompt to get the recovery key, it's the long number under Password).@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
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@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
@darrell73 @jernej__s @simonzerafa That's about it. Don't have your hard drive stolen and you should be good.
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@jernej__s @prism @simonzerafa Wow! My wife keeps getting hit with this bitlocker recovery issue every six weeks or so. And of course it's totally inaccessible since Windows isn't fully running yet. Anyway to just totally turn off bitlocker completely? Any consequences I should be aware of if I go that route other than just having less security, of course?
@darrell73 @prism @simonzerafa If you're on Home, open elevated command prompt (Win+R,
cmd, Ctrl+Shift+Enter), and runmanage-bde -off C:– this'll turn off BitLocker completely and decrypt the drive (decryption happens in the background, and will pause if you turn off or restart the computer, and automatically resume when it starts again).On Pro you can also turn it off through Control Panel – search for bitlocker in Start Menu, and it should offer you BitLocker Drive Encryption, there's a Turn Off link there.
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@wing_of_eternity It's not in OneDrive and it's not in the folder. There is a shadow copy that carries indexes to the files, but it will not restore the files themselves. That's what I know so far.
@prism Interesting, I thought shadow copies should have the files too, but I don't know how windows shadow copying works.
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@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.
@norad Thanks. Tried it and it just says "couldn't copy," doesn't say why. Too bad.
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@prism I always used ShadowExplorer to export shadow copy data. It's a program written in .NET so it works out of the box on Windows. This is all from memory though.
@norad Tried copying it to an xfat drive with the same result unfortunately.
