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
    2017-10-11T13:43:00+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

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  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 :(

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-10-18T10:14:34+00:00

    i want bit locker

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-10-19T22:43:28+00:00

    I  have found that if you know the PC (it should be the last one on which you could see the content) that encrypted the drive you should be able to plug it in again and turn off bitlocker it will unencrypt your drive.

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  5. 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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