[Katsunami]

Somehow, I've trashed my main backup drive.

I've got five copies of my data:

- On the desktop
- On the laptop
- Main backup drive (MBD)
- Second backup drive
- One off-site backup drive
- (And a sixth of my music on the NUC dedicated as a music player.)

Normally I work on my desktop, and I keep my MBD and laptop in sync with it. Lately though, I've been mainly working on my laptop, and a lot of data has changed (didn't touch the desktop for close to six weeks), so I synced the MBD with the laptop, and the intention to then sync the desktop and at the same time, the second backup drive.

The laptop has a TPM, and its internal drive has been using Bitlocker since it was installed. Since a month or two ago, I've also Bitlocked the backup drives. No problems there. Everything has been working fine.

The desktop doesn't (yet) have a TPM.

So, when I connected the MBD to the desktop, I already suspected some sort of error. Windows 10 asked for a password, and I supplied it. The drive was unlocked (the lock disappeared), but when I wanted to open it, I got an error: drive structure unreadable, drive corrupted.

Well... I had expected something like "Can't be unlocked. TPM missing." To be certain, I connected the drive to the laptop again and unlocked it using its password... and got the same error there. The drive is trashed, or at least, the file system is.

Now I beg the question:

- Did the desktop trash the drive due to trying to unlock it without a TPM? (I tested this drive on my previous, almost 10 year old old laptop, which does have a TPM, and it unlocked and worked as expected there.)
- Did something else, somewhere, go wrong?

So now I've removed the partition, Bitlocked the drive again on the laptop, and I'm recreating the entire backup. When done, I'll try it on the desktop again and I'll see what happens.

(I don't actually know if a Bitlocker ToGo drive needs a TPM to be unlocked, or if the password is sufficient. I can imagine the TPM only being necessary to store the decription key, for internal drives set to auto-unlock. Nevertheless, I do intend to install the Asus TPM onto my desktop's mainboard, as it only costs €9.95.)