Solved External hard drive has to be opened from bitlocker

[jenieragav]

Dear Friends,
I have a Toshiba external hard drive. When I viewed the photos on it accidentally my friend locked with bitlocker in my absence. He has no idea about the recovery key and password. He has given some hints for the password. But all failed. Can anyone help me out of this issue.

 

[Brink]

Hello Jenieragav, and welcome to Eight Forums.

I'm afraid that if you have do not have the password or recovery key, then about the only option is to format the drive to be able to use it again. That's what BitLocker is designed for. No access with password or key.

 

[adamf]

If you use a microsoft account you can get the key from here bitlocker recovery keys

Otherwise unless it is unlocking automatically there is nothing you can do except keep guessing.

 

[jenieragav]

Is there any idea to recover the important data before formatting?

 

[adamf]

Is there any idea to recover the important data before formatting?

No chance at all. That is the whole point of it as Brink said.

 

[Brink]

Check what Adam posted to see if you may get lucky.

If not, then sorry, but no since BitLocker is designed to prevent access with the password or key.

 

[jenieragav]

Thank you

Oh. Thank god and dear friends. I have recovered the recovery key from my Microsoft Account. Thanks a lot.

 

[Brink]

Thank goodness.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/21433-bitlocker-recovery-unlock-drive-windows-8-a.html

 

[jenieragav]

Hai Brink and Adamf I come back with another issue that I could not set the automatic unlock in my device since I have no bitlocker in my Lap. Let me know what to do.

 

[adamf]

I don't have a non-pro version to test with but you could try

manage-bde -autounlock -enable E:

as described here http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/21433-bitlocker-recovery-unlock-drive-windows-8-a.html and let us know what happens. You have to change the E in red to whatever drive you want to auto unlock.

 

[ingber]

I am curious about a similar context: We have Thinkpad Carbon X1 PCs with TPM running Windows 8.1.1 x64 Pro. Our C: drives and our external D: drives are bitlocked using the TPM. We run nightly Acronis backup images and weekly Windows backup images of our C: drives onto our D: drives. The most current D: backups also are rsync'd across D: drives.

Say a C: drive on one PC crashes. I would like to use the most current D:-drive backup to restore this drive to the SSD.

Somehow the D: drive has to be able to be accessed by the USB Acronis media, but only after the D: drive is decrypted. How? Can the PC boot with a blank or hosed C: drive at least by opening an decrypted D: drive? Or, do I need to first install some WIndows version on the C: drive to be able to boot; or will a USB Windows recovery stick be sufficient to boot the PC and access the backups on the bitlocked D: drive?


If the above fails, I guess I could use the 2nd PC to restore the 1st PC to a new C: drive temporarily placed into the 2nd PC, using the current Acronis backup of the 1st PC on the 2nd PC's D: drive, using the bitlocker recovery keys? However, it should be easiest to directly boot and restore the affected PC only?

P.S.:
I think http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/21433-bitlocker-recovery-unlock-drive-windows-8-a.html answers my query.