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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-11-06T18:53:19+00:00

    Hi,

    Thank you for posting in Microsoft Communities.

    As I understand that you are unable to access your external hard disc and you get a message stating “The drive is locked by bit locker”.

    BitLocker Drive Encryption will lock an encrypted drive and require recovery in these situations:

    1. BitLocker has detected a possible security risk during startup.
    2. BitLocker startup key or PIN is lost, or the startup key is damaged.

    Note 1: if a drive is locked using Bit Locker there is no way you can unlock it without the key. if you

    don’t have the key you cannot access the Drive. The key or the Recovery drive is the only way to access your drive back.

    Note 2: Bit Locker will not be enabled automatically.

    Regain access to a computer locked by BitLocker Drive Encryption:

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

    Thank you for contacting Microsoft Communities.

    You are mistaken Vinz.  Two of my usb thumb drives have been locked randomly by bit locker.  I've never locked anything and never even heard of bitlocker.  I definitely didn't lock them on my own and now I can't unlock them.  What's the fix for this?

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-04-24T19:44:51+00:00

    One Year ago I did wrote:

    How does Microsoft find itself as a company? These are not working systems and there is no repair. This in also a legal issue, is it not? Why is Microsoft incapable to solve problems and do it even try?

    Today the poblem is there. It seems that no one is trying to solve it. When You are big enough customer has to obey and does not count any more.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-02-16T10:32:08+00:00

    Interesting! I have now found my first Bitlocker security code. I will try it, whwn I have my useless external hard drive in my hands. I still think this all sucks. I have not used Bitlocker and I still have to learn and try several things to correct Microsoft’ s wrong doings. This is NOT customer care!

    16.2.2017

    Martti

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-06-03T12:09:37+00:00

    Locked mine too itself, after i connected to a laptop with windows 8 and then reconnected to my windows 7 laptop. I never heard of nor used bitlocker before. Two of my external disks are locked just like that...

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-04-13T06:34:13+00:00

    Hi Lena,

    Thank you for the reply.

    Sorry to hear about the inconvenience.

    By default Bit locker will not  lock any drives unless it is locked by user.

    If you still have any issues with Bit locker please do let us know and thank you for sharing this information.

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