How to Recover Data from BitLocker Encrypted Drive in Windows 11/10
Have you deleted crucial data on the BitLocker drive by mistake or formatted the encrypted drive without data backup? That is really out of luck. But relax, maybe the post will help you. Unlike normal data recovery, recovering data from a BitLocker drive in Windows 10/11 requires the additional recovery key or password. We’d better learn what BitLocker encryption is before talking about its file recovery.
BitLocker Drive Encryption
BitLocker Drive Encryption is the data security feature integrated with the operating system and protects private data from unauthorized access. When you want to protect sensitive files on the drive, you could enable BitLocker Encryption. Besides encrypting the system partition or internal drive, you also can encrypt the removable drives with BitLocker Go To. It supports encrypting USB, SD Card, external drive, and other drives that are formatted by using the NTFS, FAT16, FAT32, or exFAT file system.
BitLocker drive encryption makes your drive more secure indeed, but it also makes your data inaccessible when you forget the password. Data Recovery software for Windows 11 or Windows 10 has no way to scan the encrypted drive without authorization. No scan, no files.
What Should Do before BitLocker Recovery?
1) Find out the BitLocker Recovery Key.
When you turn on the Bitlocker, Microsoft will force you to create a recovery key and it will give 3 options to save it. They include: Save to your Microsoft account, save to a file, print the recovery key.
If you forget the key, you can search in your Microsoft account or search the .txt file with "BitLocker Recovery Key" on your computer. With the second way, I get my recovery key, it looks like this:
2) Download iBeesoft Data Recovery
It is effective data recovery software. With it, you could quickly retrieve deleted files from a thumb drive, internal drive, USB, etc. in Windows 10 and others OS. It covers most data loss scenarios such as raw drive, formation, missing partition, deletion by mistake.
Guide to Restore Files from BitLocker Drive in Windows 10/11
Decrypted BitLocker firstly. With the recovery key, you need to decrypt BitLocker firstly. Go to the encrypted drive and click right, and it will display the drop-down menu. Select "Manage BitLocker" to access the Control Panel. Now you could see Turn off BitLocker. Click Decrypt Bitlocker and wait a moment. It will take some time to finish the decryption. Now you could recover data from decrypted drive.
NOTICE: It is impossible to get back the data without the recovery key from the BitLocker drive. Although some solutions say it can directly retrieve data from BitLocker, it still needs the recovery key or password during the process, or someone will get stuck into it.
- After decrypting the BitLocker Drive, run the hard disk recovery software.
- Select the BitLocker hard disk to extract data
- After scanning completed, preview found files.
- Recover files from encrypted hard drive
You could choose the location where you want to restore from. In my case, I choose C: partition, because it was the BitLocker encrypted volume before. Then click the "Scan" button to scan. It will take couple mins to scan the partition.
We need some time to figure out the desired files. The more you know about the loss file, the faster you could locate them. This unerase Windows 10 tool will list the scan result in the tree directory. you can see them.
iBeesoft data recovery supports previewing the file before recovering. If you have no problem with the file, click "Recover" to save it on another partition/disk. Now you have successfully recovered the lost data in Windows 11, 10, and 7.
Additional information About BitLocker
How to enable BitLocker Drive Encryption in Windows 10/11?
Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> BitLocker Drive Encryption. Locate "Turn on BitLocker" and click it. Operate as its guidance and you could successfully enable BitLocker in 5 mins.
How to Disable BitLocker Drive Encryption?
Get the recovery key firstly. And Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> BitLocker Drive Encryption. Locate "Turn Off BitLocker" and follow its guidance to disable BitLocker Encryption.