Recovering Bitlocker Encrypted Drive

[eliksir]

I'll start with a description of how I got where I am. I have an external HDD (attached via USB) that I encrypted with Bitlocker on a Windows 7 setup. Recently the drive stopped responding - it didn't show up as a drive letter when I plugged it into the USB port. I suspected that the drive itself was still working since I never heard it make the typical clicking noise. I took it out of it's enclosure and plugged it in directly to a SATA port on the mobo. When windows came up, it didn't prompt me for the Bitlocker password, so I launched disk administrator which showed it as an attached unformatted drive. It also told me that it has to initialize the file system which I suspected to mean that the MBR got corrupted on the drive. In hopes of fixing this, I detached the OS drive and used the windows 7 dvd to boot the setup and selected the repair option. I then reattached the OS drive and rebooted. Now when windows comes up, it asks me to format the drive that is encrypted. To make things clear: the file system of the OS that I used to encrypt the drive is in tact. It just doesn't know that the contents of the drive are locked.

So now the question is, can I recover the files on the encrypted external drive? I've checked out the info on the Bitlocker recovery

 

[pcgeek11]

l start with a description of how I got where I am. I have an external HDD (attached via USB) that I encrypted with Bitlocker on a Windows 7 setup. Recently the drive stopped responding - it didn't show up as a drive letter when I plugged it into the USB port. I suspected that the drive itself was still working since I never heard it make the typical clicking noise. I took it out of it's enclosure and plugged it in directly to a SATA port on the mobo. When windows came up, it didn't prompt me for the Bitlocker password, so I launched disk administrator which showed it as an attached unformatted drive. It also told me that it has to initialize the file system which I suspected to mean that the MBR got corrupted on the drive. In hopes of fixing this, I detached the OS drive and used the windows 7 dvd to boot the setup and selected the repair option. I then reattached the OS drive and rebooted. Now when windows comes up, it asks me to format the drive that is encrypted. To make things clear: the file system of the OS that I used to encrypt the drive is in tact. It just doesn't know that the contents of the drive are locked.


So now the question is, can I recover the

 

[eliksir]

The forums seem to be acting up...can you repost your response?

 

[L00PY]

What happens when you use the BitLocker Repair Tool?