What is a BitLocker Recovery Key, and How to Find It
/What is a BitLocker recovery key?
BitLocker is a Windows feature that encrypts your device’s drive to protect your data. It scrambles all of the data on the drive so that it is unreadable without the correct decryption key. This protects against an unauthorised person bypassing Windows sign in protections by removing the drive from your device and attempting to access your data by connecting it to a second device.
While this is a valuable security feature to protect your data, there are times where it may get in the way of you accessing the data. This is common in our repair shop - if your device has been damaged beyond repair, we will often try to get data from drive for you so that you don’t lose anything important that was not backed up previously. However, if your drive is encrypted with BitLocker, we will need to get the recovery key to access any of the encrypted data.
How do you find your BitLocker recovery key?
There are a few places where recovery key might be found, here are some instructions on how you can go about finding they key.
Personal Microsoft Account:
The majority of the time the recovery key will be backed up to your personal Microsoft account. Here are the steps to retrieve the key:
1. Open a web browser on another device, and go to https://aka.ms/myrecoverykey
2. Sign in with your Microsoft account
3. Identify the device that the recovery key is needed for - there should be a 48 digit displayed next to the device name and key ID. This is the recovery key.
Once you have that 48 digit number, you should be able to use it to unlock your drive and access data.
Work or School Account:
If the device was ever logged into an organisation using a work of school account, the recovery key could be stored in the organisations account. In this case, you may have to contact the IT support team for the organisation to get recovery key. You may be able to directly access it, here are some similar steps you can take.
1. Open a web browser on another device, and go to https://aka.ms/aadrecoverykey
2. Sign in with your work or school account
3. Find the relevant device that you need the recovery key for, and click View BitLocker keys. If stored here you should be able to see the needed recovery key.
Printed on paper or stored on USB flash Drive:
When activating BitLocker, you may have printed out the recovery key on a sheet of paper. In this case, it should be kept in a safe location where you keep important papers. The recovery key will be clearly printed out.
Another option that may have been chosen is to store it on a USB flash drive. In this case the recovery key may be stored as a text file where you can find the recovery key.
Can’t find the recovery key?
Following the steps above should let you find the recovery key for your device - in the large majority of cases it has simply been automatically backed up to your personal Microsoft account, so as long as you have access to that account it should be easy to find.
In the case that the recovery key has been lost, there is unfortunately not much that can be done. We won’t be able to retrieve the data from your drive without it. Hopefully these instructions make the process easier to navigate through. If you need any further help feel free to visit our shop or contact us to chat with one of our technicians.
Email us at hello@right-click.ie or call (01) 475 9681 to contact us.