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How to unlock BitLocker without recovery key?

I got a BitLocker on my Dell laptop to protect my files on the disk. I forgot my password. And I tried to find the recovery key but nothing. Maybe I lost but I'm not sure about it. In a word, I can’t unlock my disk.

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Eudora Liu

Eudora Liu

Answered on Wednesday, May 31, 2023

 To unlock BitLocker without a recovery key, recovering the password or recovery key is the best way. But if neither of them works, the only way to unlock it is by formatting your disk to remove the BitLocker encryption. You can operate with the following methods.

Method 1: Recover your password. 

You can try to enter your common passwords. Maybe you can get the correct password to unlock BitLocker with some luck. 

Method 2: Recover your recovery key. 

When you activate BitLocker, it will produce a recovery key and store it in a file. You can use the following ways to find the file.

  • Find the recovery key from where you store it.
  • Search the recovery key file on your PC.
  • Recover the recovery key file.

If the PC doesn't show you a satisfactory result, you might have deleted the recovery key file by accident, and you can use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Windows to help you recover it.

Method 3: Format the drive.

 If the above two solutions still can't help you to unlock BitLocker, you have to format your disk.

  1. Open "This PC" on the desktop.
  2. Find the BitLocker-encrypted drive.
  3. Right-click the drive and choose "Format".
  4. Select "Quick Format" on the popup window and choose the file system.
  5. Set a new name for it and click "Start".

But what you should know is once you format the disk locked by BitLocker, you will lose all your data.

Read more: How to unlock BitLocker without the recovery key?

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