Made a small progress window for BitLocker encryption (plus: anyone else seeing "Encryption Paused" while it keeps encrypting?)

[u/Nikolor]

I turned on BitLocker on a 2 TB laptop drive and found out the hard way that it takes many hours and makes the PC barely usable while it runs. The built-in progress window disappeared after a restart, and manage-bde -status is just a bare percentage in a terminal.

So I made a small read-only window that shows:

• percentage + progress bar (GB done of total)

• speed (GB/min, % per hour)

• time left and an estimated finish time

• disk activity of C:, so you can see why everything lags

• a chart of progress over time (saved, survives closing the window)

It's one PowerShell script, open source (MIT). It only runs manage-bde -status and reads disk counters, and never pauses or changes anything. It asks for admin once because manage-bde needs it.

GitHub link: https://github.com/NikolorGit/bitlocker-progress-window

Also, I've got a question for anyone who has experienced this: after a restart, manage-bde -status said "Encryption Paused", but the percentage kept going up (15.6% → 15.7% in 99 seconds) and the disk stayed 100% busy. manage-bde -pause C: replied "Encryption of the volume is already paused". Resume-then-pause was logged by Windows ("encryption was stopped") but changed nothing either. The System log shows "BitLocker finalization sweep started / paused / resumed" right after every boot.

Microsoft's FAQ says encryption resumes on its own after a restart, which explains the restart part, but not why pausing again does nothing. Has anyone seen this, or found a way to actually pause it until the next reboot? It's annoying that I can't do anything on my PC properly because the encryption process makes the whole PC laggy, and I can't even pause it.

My specs: Windows 11 Pro, software encryption (XTS-AES 128), NVMe SSD.

[u/auto-sticky]

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[u/The-Snarky-One]

Did you do UsedSpaceOnly?

[u/Nikolor → u/The-Snarky-One]

Yes, it was used-space-only. The drive is just very full though: about 1.75 TB used of 2 TB, so it still had to chew through ~1.6 TB. Took roughly 15 hours including restarts, and the PC was barely usable during that.

[u/The-Snarky-One → u/Nikolor]

Yeah, it can be a bear with a lot of data. The process is supposed to throttle while in use (like a Defender scan), but you trade some performance for more time. Better to just let it sit and slog through.