How To Recover Your Bitlocker Encrypted Drive If You Have Forgotten Your Password

If you have followed our previous guide on how to encrypt and store your data with the help of bitlocker in windows 8 then you would have also noticed that during the setup of bitlocker on your drive you were presented with recovery key which you could use when you forget your password.

Windows 8 had the option of saving your recovery key to your Microsoft account but in Windows 7 you had the option of either saving it to a file or printing out the key and then using it.

So we have prepared a guide for you that will allow you to use the recovery key that you have saved to unlock your encrypted drive and also change the password so that you can set up an easy to remember password.

How To Recover Bitlocker Encrypted Drive With The Help Of Recovery Key

1. If you are windows 8 Pro then you visit the url http://skydrive.live.com/recoverykey and log in with the account which was used to save the key.
2. Once there you will see the list of recovery keys if you have more than one bitlocker encrypted drive.
3. Clicking on the key will expand it and show more details regarding the key such as the date it was uploaded and key ID
4. If you are using windows 7 then open the file where you saved your key and get a print out
5. Now type command prompt in start menu and press enter to launch it
6. In command prompt enter the following key repair-bde D: F: -rp 010747-002530-189948-266464-499609-493075-315183-432520 –F Note replace D: with your encrypted drive and letter F: with the letter of the drive to which you want the contents of your encrypted drive to be saved to.
7. Because your bit locker encrypted drive will be formatted as it is restored to its original state
8. Now you can head over to the drive where you transferred the data and see everything has been copied and your bit locker drive has been formatted and bit locker key removed.

There you have an easy to follow guide that will enable you to recover the contents of your bitlocker encrypted drive in the event you forgot the password and restoring it to factory settings.

If you know of any other way with which you can recover the data from your bitlocker encrypted drive when you forgot the password do let us know.