How to Recover Data from BitLocker Encrypted Hard Drive?

Summary: Have you lost any of your important data from the BitLocker encrypted drive? Worry not as you have arrived at the right place. By reading this article you will get to know about various methods to decrypt BitLocker-Encrypted hard drives along with the best recovery tool which can recover all of your important data from a BitLocker encrypted drive.

How can you protect your confidential and important data from theft, intruders, and hackers? The answer is by using BitLocker Drive Encryption. It is an advanced security feature introduced by Microsoft for Windows-based operating systems. BitLocker Drive Encryption provides the best data protection by encrypting entire data stored on Windows-based system partitions or volumes. Encrypting the whole partition or volume allows you to protect all the data residing on the partition.

Table Of Contents

• What Is Bitlocker Encrypted Drive?
• Common Data Loss Scenarios Associated With BitLocker Encrypted Drive
• Methods to Decrypt BitLocker-Encrypted Hard Drive
• Method 1: Use BitLocker Drive Encryption Using Control Panel
• Method 2: Decrypt your BitLocker encrypted hard drive using certificates
• Method 3: By Using Windows Command Prompt
• How To Recover Data From BitLocker Encrypted Drive?
• Steps To Recover Data From BitLocker Encrypted Drive
• Conclusion

What is Bitlocker Encrypted Drive?

BitLocker encrypted drive is a mechanism by which you can protect your data from intruders and hackers by password protecting it. However, BitLocker encrypted drive works normally as it was performing before encryption, as the data gets automatically encrypted and stored into the hard drive.

However BitLocker Drive Encryption is not safe from data loss, assume that you started performing BitLocker encryption on a drive but in course of performing any interruption occurs such as sudden power loss, abrupt system shutdown, etc. Then you may probably lose your entire data which was saved on that drive. Apart from this, there can be many other scenarios that can cause severe damage to your BitLocker encrypted drive.

common data loss scenarios associated with BitLocker encrypted drive:

• If you are deleting or formatting your data unknowingly or unintentionally then you may lose your data from BitLocker encrypted drive.
• The file system of the BitLocker encrypted drive may get corrupted due to severe virus infection, when this situation occurs the entire data within the BitLocker encrypted drive may get lost.
• You may come across a situation where BitLocker encrypted drive may become inaccessible due to disk input/output error or due to other reasons which would then result in loss of your data within the drive.
• At times the metadata associated with BitLocker encrypted drive may get damaged, when you come across this situation then you may lose your vital data.

Methods For Decrypting A BitLocker Encrypted Hard Drive

Below we have mentioned some easy methods using which you can decrypt your BitLocker encrypted hard drive:

Method 1: Use BitLocker Drive Encryption Using Control Panel

If you still have admin access to your Windows computer, you can decrypt the BitLocker-encrypted drive easily from the Control Panel:

• Go to Control Panel, and Click on the System and Security option.







• Select the BitLocker Drive Encryption option to launch the BitLocker configuration panel.







• Find the drive on which you want BitLocker Drive Encryption turned off, and click Turn off BitLocker.





• A pop-up is displayed, informing you that the drive will be decrypted and that decryption may take some time. Click on Turn off BitLocker to start the decryption process.

Method 2: Decrypt Your BitLocker Encrypted Hard Drive Using Certificates

To decrypt a BitLocker-encrypted drive using certificates, follow the below steps:

Note: You need an encrypted hard drive certificate to perform this method

Step 1: Go to the Start menu.

Step 2: Type certmgr.msc and press Enter.

Step 3: Click on Certificate Manager to open it.

Step 4: Select a personal folder of your choice.

Step 5: Choose Actions and then choose All Tasks.

Step 6: After that follow the certificate import wizard and on-screen instructions.

Method 3: By Using Windows Command Prompt

To turn off Bitlocker encryption using the command prompt first log in to your Admin user account and then follow the below steps:

1. Open the Command prompt in Administrator mode.
2. To check the status of BitLocker encryption in the system execute the command given below.

manage-bde -status

3. Make sure that the results for the required drives(C:, D:, etc) are as follows:

Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted

Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%



If the result is "Percentage Encrypted: 100.0%", decrypt the BitLocker for the required drives using the commands given below.

manage-bde -off [drive letter]:

For example manage-bde -off C

4. Check the BitLocker status after disabling using the command (manage-bde -status) and ensure that the "Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%".

How To Recover Data From BitLocker Encrypted Drive?

To easily and safely restore data from BitLocker Encrypted Drive, make use of the Remo Recover software. Remo Recover software is built with a robust scanning algorithm that can scan and recover more than 500+ file types from your hard drive. To keep data recovery from a drive effective and easy, Remo Recover is designed with a self-explanatory user interface. Download the software and preview your recovered files from your BitLocker Encrypted Drive for free now.

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Steps To Recover Data From BitLocker Encrypted Drive

To start the recovery process from your BitLocker Encrypted Drive first download and install the Remo Recover Software and follow the below simple steps:

Step 1: Launch the Remo Recover tool, and select the Bitlocker encrypted drive that needs recovery.

Note: If the drive is not available, click on the Can’t find Drive? option.

Step 2: After selecting the drive click on the Scan button. Once the scan starts you can click on the Dynamic Recovery View to recover the lost file during the scanning process itself.

Step 3: You can see the rescued data under the Lost and Found folder or Lost Partition folder.

Step 4: Double-click on any file to Preview the recovered files such as documents, PPTs, excel sheets, photos, videos etc for free.

Step 5: If you are satisfied with the recovery results, select the files which you want to restore and hit Recover to save them at your desired location.

Conclusion

In this article, we explained some common data loss scenarios on BitLocker encrypted hard drives, methods to decrypt a BitLocker encrypted hard drive, and how to recover data from BitLocker encrypted drive using a professional data recovery tool like Remo Recover.

If you have any further queries regarding the article, please make use of the comment section below.