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

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-12T13:15:36+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.

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