BitLocker locked my external harddrive by itself?!

Anonymous
2014-10-11T23:49:51+00:00

Hi,

Today I connected my external harddrive to my PC and it popped-up this message saying the drive is locked by bitlocker.

This has never happend before on the same PC.

I had no clue wat bitlocker was, so I looked it up and I start to believe that I will never be able to acces my drive again because:

I have no recovery key or password because I have never been in contact with bitlocker in my life untill now.

I searched on every drive inside and outside my PC for it and my microsoft account tells me I have 0 keys stored. 

So, what can I do? This disk contains data I need, so formatting is not an option.

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

56 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2017-10-18T10:14:34+00:00

    i want bit locker

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2017-10-13T14:19:25+00:00

    Quick update.

    So I sent my drive to a professional data recovery company. They spent some time on it and said there's nothing that can be done.

    Without the key, there's no way of getting the data back unfortunately :(

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2017-10-11T13:43:00+00:00

    Hi Tom,

    many thanks for your reply. I had the feeling that Microsoft doesn't care at all about this issue and ultimately one has to rely on private assistance and of course at its own expenses.

    I'll try to do the same, please keep us updated.

    Many thanks,

    alex

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2017-10-11T13:29:56+00:00

    Hey AlessandroRemy

    I feel your pain. As far as my knowledge extends there was nothing I could, if you don't have the key you aren't unlocking it with any main stream software.

    Yesterday I sent it to a data recovery company, I'm not holding out any hope but If they do have any success then I'll post it on here.

    Tom

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2017-10-11T13:24:17+00:00

    I'm a Software Engineer and use a 2TB external Seagate drive to backup my work, I've been using this same workflow for about 8 months without a problem.

    Yesterday, I turned my Windows 10 Pro machine on and the Seagate drive was encrypted.

    I was never prompted to enable Bitlocker, and more importantly at no point was the opportunity to save or print the unlock key presented to me. This all happened in the background without my knowledge.

    My theory? If Windows suffers a system or security exception it encrypts all the external drives at startup.

    Obviously, like others, I'm completely furious. It's pretty scandalous that Microsoft have let this continue for YEARS without ever even acknowledging it. I'm going to have to raise it with some tech news outlets as users should be clearly aware that there is a risk in using USB drives with Windows.

    Who needs ransomware when we have Microsoft.

    Hi tomjordan1,

    I got the same problem. Is there a way to solve it? I was suggested to write on the mytech forum but nobody replied!

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments