How to Recover Formatted BitLocker Encrypted Drive

BitLocker Encrypted Drive accidentally formatted by me. So what am I supposed to do? Can you please help me in this situation? Yes!! We are here to help you out of this situation. This blog will provide you all the measures to recover formatted BitLocker Encrypted drive. Read this carefully!!

Introduction of BitLocker

1. BitLocker consists of a full-volume encryption feature that is included with Windows versions of Microsoft starting with Windows Vista. 
2. Bitlocker metadata can be used to save the password or 48-digit Bitlocker Recovery Key. 
3. It is structured by providing encryption for whole volumes to protect the data. 
4. To access or open the encrypted disk, you need to uninstall BitLocker encryption several times. To do so, the encrypted hard drive has to be erased or formatted.
5. Recovering formatted BitLocker drive after formatting the hard drive can be difficult.

Many possible ways help in getting back data from an optimized encrypted Bitlocker drive, so don’t worry about securing your data. Join us through from top to bottom. Before moving further let’s have a look at the reasons behind this.

Reasons for BitLocker Encrypted Drive Formatted

• Improper formatting: Users unable to access their drive when RAW is turned on their file system. In such a case, they typically format their disks to reach the hard drive, but as a result of formatting, their data is lost.

• Virus Attack: When a virus has infected your hard drive, the data inside your hard drive will also get damage and unreadable. The antivirus or firewall of your system will block the disk in such a scenario and force you to format it. The Windows firewall will delete metadata from BitLocker which leads to data loss.

• Unintentionally formatting Drive: Users unintentionally format their hard drive, but they want to format other disks with their important data resulting in formatting the disk.

So, these are all explanations behind BitLocker’s hard drive formatting. Now, before the recovery process, follow the steps below, you must learn several important points to recover BitLocker encrypted drive:

• Try using BitLocker’s encrypted drive. Once the file has been deleted/lost from an encrypted BitLocker disk, if the drive is an internal drive, you must immediately shut down the device and install the drive into another computer, then use another hard drive operating system to retrieve it. The encrypted BitLocker drive is an external hard drive which is the best way to save the new data.
  
• Data recovery will take place at the earliest opportunity. When Windows continues to write files to your encrypted BitLocker drive, the chances of overwriting the deleted files will increase. And please do the recovery of data as soon as possible.

These are the important points you must know. Now, begin with the manual solutions to recover formatted BitLocker Encrypted drive-

How to manually Recover data from formatted Bitlocker Encrypted Drive?

• Data Restore from Recycle bin

It always stays in the Recycle bin if you remove some files from the local hard disk. Manually remove such files because they remain there.

So if you want to restore the deleted data then follow the steps below:

1. Go to desktop>>double-click or right-click >> Recycle Bin icon & open it.
2. Right-click the files you have chosen.
3. In the context menu, choose the restore.

• Manual Steps to decrypt BitLocker Hard drive

Use GUI

1. Hit on Start>>Control Panel>.System and Security>>BitLocker Drive Encryption.
2. To turn off BitLocker Drive Encryption, look for the drive and press Turn Off BitLocker.    
3. A notification will be shown saying the drive will be decrypted and decryption will take some time. To start and turn off BitLocker on the drive, press Turn off Bitlocker / Decrypt the drive.

Use Windows Powershell

Windows PowerShell should already be there in your computer.

Note: The cmdlet to disable BitLocker encryption will not work if the operating system partition has any automatic unlocking keys in it. To deactivate the BitLocker partition, you can use the PowerShell window’s Clear-BitLockerAutoUnlock cmdlet to delete all automatically unlock keys.

1. Start the Windows PowerShell in administrator mode.
2. Run the below commands:

• PS C:\>$BLV = Get-BitLockerVolume
• PS C:\>Disable-BitLocker -MountPoint $BLV

1. With the following commands, check the decryption progress :

• Run the command: PS C:\> Get-BitLockerVolume
• Verify decryption progress in “Volume Status” & “Encryption Percentage”.

By the above methods, you can easily and quickly recover data from formatted Bitlocker encrypted drive.

Final Verdict

This article explained about BitLocker then the reasons for formatted BitLocker encrypted drive. After that, manual solutions had told how to recover formatted BitLocker Encrypted drive quickly.

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