Bitlocker automatically locked my m.2 hard drive

Question

I bought and installed a m.2 hard drive on my ASUS TUF gaming laptop and loaded it with a bunch of games. I then decided to sell my laptop. I removed the m.2 hardrive from my laptop and installed it into my desktop gaming PC. When I turned on my computer, it detected the new hardrive, but it indicated that it is currently locked by bitlocker.

I had never even heard of bitlocker until this moment, so I certainly don't have a bitlocker key.

Why did bitlocker lock this drive and how do I get around this?

For info, my PC has a Gigabyte motherboard.

Answer 1

BitLocker normally won't encrypt hard disk automatically unless if your device is part of company's network and it will done by the administrator (which I believe is not in your case).
I expect your drive has been encrypted and the key is inside the TPM chipset.
I advise you to take hard drive and place it to the other device which is not asking for the key and see if you are able to open it?
If yes, you may right click and click on **Turn off BitLocker ** and once it done, then take it and connect it to the new device.

Answer 2

Hello AlexLiebersbach

If your previous computer had bitlocker turned on, it would encrypt the device by default. In this case, you will need the original computer in order to unencrypt the drive, as the TPM chip installed in the motherboard is the one holding the key to unlock it (even if you had the recovery key).

You can read more about this topic in the next forum discussion about the processes, viability, etc:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dc4b0c7d-bb1b-4a74-bc06-7d084fb38926/moving-bitlocker-encrypted-drive-to-new-computer?forum=win10itprogeneral

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