uddenly Can't Access Drive D: "BitLocker Encryption on this drive isn't compatible with your version of Windows" – No BitLocker Enabled, Windows 11 Home

Question

Hi Community,

I’m facing a strange issue and would appreciate any help.

I have a laptop running Windows 11 Home (pre-installed), which I understand does not support full BitLocker encryption. My system has two drives:

• Drive C: SSD (System Drive)

Drive D: 1TB HDD (used for storage)

One day, without any Windows or BIOS updates, I suddenly couldn't access Drive D. The following error is shown: "BitLocker Encryption on this drive isn't compatible with your version of Windows."

Here’s some more context:

I never enabled BitLocker manually.

• I checked my Microsoft account for a recovery key – there’s nothing listed.
• Disk Management (screenshot attached) shows Drive D as:

  931.51 GB Unknown (BitLocker Encrypted) – Healthy (Basic Data Partition)

I’ve tried everything I could find online, including commands and system tools, but nothing worked.

Can anyone please help me understand what might have caused this, and more importantly, how I can recover the data from Drive D without formatting?

Thanks in advanceerror.png