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.

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Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-08T16:55:55+00:00

    Thank you Ballymoss.  This worked for me, and saved me endless additional hours of frustration.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-04-23T03:38:38+00:00

    Like many other users experienced, my external HDD was also locked by Bitlocker without my knowledge. I didn't even know what Bitlocker was, and even now, I can't find Bitlocker application in my Dell XPS (Windows 10 Home).

    The story is, I just had my Dell being repaired at Dell Repairing Center and they had to reinstall the Windows. After I got back my Dell, I tried to plug the external HDD and there was a notification saying that my external HDD was locked by Bitlocker and I have to input the 48-digit recovery key to unlock the drive. How would I know that when I never protect my external HDD using password or anything? I could access the external HDD in this Dell laptop just before I sent it to the repairing center. I tried to read the linked articles, and they're not helpful. It's not that I forgot or lost the recovery key, I didn't even got one and didn't even know that some strange feature made it locked.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-10-20T18:58:36+00:00

    Bitlocker locked my external USB Hard drive by itself. All I did was disconnect my hard drive from my computer and relocate to another room. When I hooked back up, the hard drive was locked.

    I've read several stories this has happened, but MS keeps saying it can't enabled itself. Well, it did, and I have a lot of person info my drive I can't get.

    Someone needs a real solution for this issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-06-22T21:31:15+00:00

    As I explained I never used bit-locker in the first place. This program is activated by itself.

    Through the Manage-bde I could get the .bek filename but this file is not located anywhere on my computer

    Is there anything else I  can do.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-05-18T03:02:24+00:00

    Hi Yeoman,

    Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

    I would suggest you to refer to the Microsoft help article:

    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-8/bitlocker-drive-encryption

    Also I suggest you to post this issue in TechNet forum we have a dedicated team with advanced tools and permissions to help you with this issue so please post you query on TechNet forum.

    https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/home?category=w8itpro

    For reference:

    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831507.aspx

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