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BitLocker encrypted drive shows as RAW

Anonymous
2023-12-22T13:46:01+00:00

I have a laptop with a corrupted BIOS so I tried backing up data from its SSD, but it was encrypted with BitLocker. It showed up in Drive Management as an Unallocated drive so I tried creating a Simple Volume to see if it would show up in Explorer or something like that. It obviously didn't and now it appears formatted in RAW. I just realized that BitLocker drives are probably write-protected when the computer is off, so a simple volume couldn't have been written.

Is there a way to convert this drive to another file system or is it done for?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-12-23T07:07:47+00:00

    Hello，MattiaBuccheri

    Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community.

    If you have set up Bitlocker to be uploaded to your Microsoft account, you will be able to see your recovery key under the corresponding device on account.microsoft.com, and then you can access the SSD to back up your data.

    If you don't find the Bitlocker recovery key, it will be very difficult to retrieve the data, and you will have to convert the drive to NTFS format by using a third-party software and reinstall the system.

    I wish you all the best and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, I look forward to hearing from you which will determine where we go next!

    Best Regards，

    Rota Ye |Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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