F drive is paused (BitLocker) and I cannot resume it

Hi there,

I am hoping someone can help here before I go down the of paying to have my data recovered.

My laptop has two drives, C (SSD) and F (HHD). I have the yellow padlock symbol, on F drive.

When I double-click to access the data I am prompted to enter the 48 digit recovery key, which I have. After entering the recovery key the padlock symbol turns grey/blue and looks unlocked.

But if I then try to access the data I get "F:\ is not accessible, the disc structure is corrupted and unreadable."

If I right-click on the drive and select "Manage BitLocker", then "Turn off BitLocker", I am prompted with a message saying the drive will be decrypted. After accepting the prompt I have another message appear title "BitLocker Drive Encryption" with a red X but there is no actual message displayed.

The drive itself says "BitLocker Encryption Paused"

I've tried these two commands in cmd in administrator mode (I am not technically minded, I found them on Google!) but neither help me: manage-bde -pause F: and manage-bde -resume F:

The latter returns "ERROR: An error occurred (code 0x80070015): The device is not ready."

Has anyone on here seen this before, and could offer any guidance before I line the pockets of someone? FYI I have run a free version of a recovery program and I can see the data.

Thanks in advance.