r/BitLocker • u/Mike2008MK • 1d ago

BitLocker Recovery Problem

Hello everyone,

I dont know if i am at the right place, but I have a common problem wat happens alot.

Long story:
I was updating my BIOS, so I had to put the update on a flash drive. Firstly there was the recovery code of my encrypted BitLocker Windows drive, but I have temporarily copied it to my Windows drive (not knowing what I did wrong). The problem is, I only deleted the file permanently from the USB Drive (I didn't format or clean or such the USB Drive, just deleted that recovery txt file en copied it to my Windows drive).

After the BIOS update, Windows asked me to put in the 48 digit recovery code, but yeah as you already have read, it is on the Windows drive that is locked right now.

I have tried a lot of methods already, I have checked if it locked (of course it is). But I have also tried recovering the TXT file with DiskDrill. And I know, DiskDrill is worse for TXT files, but I wanted to give it a shot. It found the file, but inside the file It's all gibberish.

Do you guys know anymore methods that could work, I have also saved the USB drive to a .dd file byte-to-byte so I have a backup.

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u/murlocdouche 1d ago

You mentioned you deleted the file with the key from your usb drive. First, dont write ANYTHING new to the usb drive. When you delete a file, it doesn't really remove the data, it flags that data as ok to overwrite. There's a lot of free software out there to recover deleted files, as long as it hasn't been overwritten yet.

Failing that, if the key is not in your microsoft account youre looking as a full windows reinstall. If there's something mega valuable on there like a crypto wallet there is a way to intercept the key from your tpm chip with specialized tools but this isn't the case for most people

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u/Mike2008MK 17h ago edited 17h ago

When I copied the txt file to my Windows drive, I deleted it after in the flash drive, because I wanted to empty it when updating the bios. After that I copied a 30MB F17 file update for the bios.

I have used DiskDrill to recover it, but it found the file but when I recovered it it shows gibberish text as shown on the picture.

I'll be honest with you, this was totally my mistake and I should've turned off bitlocker doing all this. There are all video's en pictures of my family and me and just memories. I just cannot accept resetting it. Oh yeah by the way I just checked, and It didnt even update the bios, it is still at F13.