My SeaGate Hard Drive Randomly Got Locked By BitLocker

Question

Hi All,

I am a wedding photographer desperately looking for help. I use a Seagate 2TB hard drive to house my RAW files in one place before editing. Luckily I have them backed up and also on the SD cards but recently when I plugged in this particular hard-drive into my PC I got an error saying BitLocker has encrypted it and I need a passcode or a key. I have never set up BitLocker on this computer at all and can not find anything about it on this computer. I also have troubleshot going into my Microsoft account looking for the recovery key since everyone has told me it has to be there but there is nothing registered to this device. I have a consult call with Microsoft and they said that they do not see BitLocker on my account either. I contacted Seagate but they said that they do not support the encryption service on their drives because it is exclusively through Microsoft? But I am beginning to believe that is not the case because when I plug it into any other windows based computer it shows the same error and on my Apple, it does not even mount to the desktop. I have exhausted all my options and I am very frustrated with Microsoft. Any helpful tips would be amazing! An no I have never plugged it in to another Windows computer

Answer 1

Hi.

If you didn't connect it anywhere else and there's no recovery key to be found, you will need to format the drive and restore from backup.
The recovery key could of course be still retrievable if you only knew who encrypted it on your machine. If you are the only person with access to your machine, it should have been you, but you say you haven't and online there's no key, so the only possible explanation to my mind is that someone played a trick on you when your machine was left unattended.

Answer 2

Hi there,

If you have a modern device that supports automatic device encryption then the driver might have been encrypted automatically. If you are sure if you have not connected the PC to any domain or organization you can try disabling the secure boot in the Pc and try opening the hard disk.

Open the PC BIOS menu:

You can often access this menu by pressing a key while your PC is booting, such as F1, F2, F12, or Esc.

From Windows, hold the Shift key while selecting Restart. Go to Troubleshoot > Advanced Options: UEFI Firmware Settings.

Find the Secure Boot setting in your BIOS menu. If possible, set it to Disabled. This option is usually in either the Security tab, the Boot tab, or the Authentication tab.

Save changes and exit and then try opening the Hard disk.

---

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept it as an answer--

Answer 3

Bump. I am having the same issue. Any new solutions?

Answer 4

I am having the same issue. Has anyone been able to locate their recovery key? Please help. I got a new computer and now my seagate external hard drive says it's encrypted. I have tried every password I have ever had and none work. I just need all the pictures on my hard drive.