Activate Bitlocker on external drive with powershell

Question

I'm trying to encrypt an external drive via powershell with bitlocker.

The script i'm posting here will be part of a bigger setup where all attached disks to a pc will be automaticly formatted and then have bitlocker enabled on them. I'm trying to set a password for unlocking the volume and export a recovery key incase worst case scenario passes...

the code:

$Pass = 'xxxxx.' | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
Enable-BitLocker -MountPoint "E:" -EncryptionMethod Aes256  -UsedSpaceOnly -PasswordProtector -Password $Pass 
Add-BitLockerKeyProtector -MountPoint "E:" -RecoveryKeyPath "D:\keys\" -RecoveryKeyProtector

do 
{
$Volume = Get-BitLockerVolume -MountPoint E:
Write-Progress -Activity "Encrypting volume $($Volume.MountPoint)" -Status "Encryption Progress:" -PercentComplete $Volume.EncryptionPercentage
Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
}
until ($Volume.VolumeStatus -eq 'FullyEncrypted')

Write-Progress -Activity "Encrypting volume $($Volume.MountPoint)" -Status "Encryption Progress:" -Completed

I'm getting an error : parameter set cannot be resolved using the specified named parameters.

Isn't it possible to both use the password and recoverykey action when bitlocking?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You cannot use both a password and recovery key when calling Enable-BitLocker .

From TechNet : "You can specify only one of these methods or combinations when you enable encryption, but you can use the Add-BitLockerKeyProtector cmdlet to add other protectors."

So use Add-BitLockerKeyProtector after enabling.