As is known to all, BitLocker drive encryption is a Windows built-in feature that protects your data from damaged, stealing, or plagiarizing by malicious users. But how can you recover lost data from BitLocker encrypted hard drives? MiniTool will tell you all.

After saving private data into a hard drive, most people are concerned about how to protect those data from being accessed, modified, or damaged by others. Thus, many of them will turn on BitLocker to safeguard hard drives with private data.

BitLocker drive encryption

Brief Introduction to BitLocker

What Is BitLocker

BitLocker is a built-in encryption tool of Microsoft. It has made its debut since Windows Vista and has always been easy to use. One of the main purposes of adding this function to Windows is to better protect data on PC.

BitLocker uses TPM to help protect Windows OS (Operating System) and your data, to ensure that system settings and important data won’t be changed even when you are not next to the computer or the computer is lost or stolen.

Also, BitLocker can work well without TPM in some regions where TPM is not allowed. But you will need to use a group policy to change the default behavior of the BitLocker setup wizard or to configure BitLocker by using a script.

BitLocker is available for the Ultimate/Enterprise editions of Windows 7 and Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 10/11.

Benefits of BitLocker Encryption

If you want to encrypt your private/sensitive/business data to ensure data security, Windows BitLocker may be your first choice. Searching “BitLocker” in Google, you can get lots of results in just a second. It shows that a large number of people are interested in BitLocker.

According to a survey, BitLocker is enabled mainly due to the following reasons.

  • BitLocker is turned on by default after installing Windows.
  • The company’s decision for data security.
  • Users’ strong sense of data protection.
  • For research purposes.

Main Causes of Data Loss on BitLocker Encrypted Drive

An increasing number of people are asking about how to recover data from BitLocker encrypted hard drives. The direct reason is more and more users are suffering data loss resulting from BitLocker drive encryption.

Now, let us see the most common specific cases in which data are lost when BitLocker is turned on.

The BitLocker will not take effect immediately after encryption was completed. Instead, you can access data in it as usual before a computer restart. At this time, your data may be lost due to wrong operations, such as file deletion and drive formatting.

Even after the BitLocker protection was enabled, you may still lose data saved in BitLocker protected drive. For instance, you may format the drive by accident or the drive may be attacked by viruses.

In summary, there are some common reasons that will lead to data loss on BitLocker encrypted drives.

  • Inadvertent user mistakes : deleting files, formatting drives, getting attacked by viruses by browsing unsafe sites, etc.
  • Hardware problems : physical damage on disk, poor connection between hard drives and computers, unstable power supply, etc.
  • BitLocker crashes : an unexpected error may occur during the encryption, forcing to end of the process. And then, no matter what you try to continue the process, you may fail.

Here's what you need to do when you encounter these problems.

Firstly, please stay calm and keep an optimistic attitude; this is often the key factor to success.

Secondly, choose third-party data recovery software to start recovering data.

Thirdly, check the files recovered and fix the damaged hard drive/partition if possible.

How to Perform a BitLocker Drive Encryption Recovery

Now, let us get to know how to recover data from BitLocker encrypted hard drives.

You need to use a third-party recovery program to perform a BitLocker drive encryption recovery.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a good choice that owns lots of users. Prepared with this tool, you’re able to recover data as soon as possible when data loss appears all of a sudden.

Note: If the BitLocker key is lost accidentally or deleted permanently, you should reset or recover the lost BitLocker recovery key . Without a BitLocker password, this software cannot access and scan an encrypted drive.

You can download and run MiniTool Power Data Recovery right away to have a try.

Free Download

Then, follow the steps given below to get back data from BitLocker encrypted drive effectively.

Step 1: In File Explorer, double-click the BitLocker encrypted drive. Then in the pop-up window, type the password to decrypt it.

Step 2: Launch the software to go to its main window. Under the Logical Drives section, select the correct drive and click Scan to start detecting files in it.

select the target partition to scan

Step 3: After scanning, the software will show you the files it has found during the scanning process. You can preview them to confirm whether the needed files are included.

  • If it has found the files you need, you can click on the “ Stop ” button to end the scanning.
  • If it has not found any items you want to recover yet, you can wait for the scan to complete; and then, look through the scan results when it is finished.

preview the files

Step 4: Pick out all the data you want to recover. After that, click Save and choose a storage path for those files. At last, click on OK to confirm your selection and start recovering files to an appointed place.

check and save all needed files

Note: If you have formatted the BitLocker encrypted drive, try to make the drive usable again. In this case, you’ll lose all data saved here, so you have to recover data from a formatted hard drive as fast as you can.