How to Recover Your Data From a BitLocked Boot Drive (Hard Drive, SSD, Etc)

So, this morning when I booted up my laptop I was greeted with a blue screen of death. Not just and blue screen of death either, one requesting my Bitlocker key. Now luckily my dad still had the bitlocker key from when he had this laptop but if you didn't know that this could be an issue then you could really be in trouble.

When you set up BitLocker Microsoft gives you the option to save the recovery key to your Microsoft account. I would highly recommend this option so that in case you ever need it, it is safely stored in Microsoft's servers. If you have multiple keys saved to your Microsoft account, use the "Key ID" displayed to correctly identify the proper key.

Well, this is where things start to get tricky, and depending on what other devices you have on hand you might be able to recover some of your data. If you have a second computer available, a way to attach the locked drive to that computer (If this is the main drive of your computer this might mean disassembling the pc or laptop and using a special HDD or SSD connector).

So on the second computer you have, you're going to want to download Wondershare Recoverit. The software is pretty straightforward, you just select the device you want to recover the information from and then you can browse and recover the data that Recoverit finds.

Don't lose your bitlocker key or you are in for a world of pain.