Unlock secondary BitLocker encrypted drive

[vlatkovr]

Hi,

I have 2 drives on my PC. One SSD where Windows 8.1 is installed and a secondary HDD for movies and stuff.
The SSD is Microsoft edrive compliant so I just enabled BitLocker encryption and set a password, i.e. Pass1.

Later I also encrypted the secondary HDD and DID NOT save the recovery keys when doing that. I clicked smth like Automatically unlock or smth when doing that as the secondary drive was always available when logging in to Windows later. No need to enter a separate password.

Now, I formatted the primary SSD and re installed Windows 8.1 but now I don't have the recovery key for the secondary drive. Is all the data lost or I can somehow use the password to unlock it?

Thank You

 

[broe23]

Sorry cannot help you with that.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Yea. If you haven't saved the recovery keys, it's lost.

If someone could un-encrypt with them, there wouldn't be much point in encrypting a drive in the first place

 

[chris1neji]

Did you not get one of these messages?

Follow by this?

It actually appears almost immediately within less than 1 minute after you encrypt something. Sadly there is not much you can do, just move on, and learn to backup encryption keys. Does Bit locker not do this? I don't personally know if it does, if it doesn't it SHOULD! I have a drive that is encrypted by Bitlocker as well, but I don't remember. I did some searching BitLocker recovery keys: Frequently asked questions - Windows Help? Maybe you "accidently" backed up online?

Do you have a system image of previous Windows installation?

 

[pparks1]

Yes, Bitlocker prompts you to back up your key. At work, we have group policy that saves recovery key to your computer account object in Active Directory.

Should always keep a copy of this, and always separated from your computer.