Recovering Data from Encryption

BitLocker To Go is the same encryption engine as system-drive BitLocker, applied to removable media — external HDDs, SSDs, and USB flash drives. The unlock mechanics carry over from our guide to recovering an internal BitLocker volume, but removable drives fail differently in practice: no TPM to fall back on, a visible FAT32 partition that gets mistaken for the whole drive, and a higher rate of physical disconnects mid-operation. This guide covers what's specific to external and USB drives.

Recovering data from a BitLocker-encrypted drive isn't the same problem in every case. A forgotten password with the recovery key still in hand is a five-minute fix. A corrupted partition table on an encrypted volume, or a system drive that lost its TPM binding after a hardware change, is a different situation entirely — the volume is still there, but locating and unlocking it takes more than typing a password into Windows. This guide covers both, for the system volume (C) and any additional encrypted data volume (D).