How to recover data from partial BitLocker encrypted drive?

Posted by Tim to BitLocker Recovery on May 9th, 2019

I corrupted a BitLocker encrypted external hard disk when encrypting it due to power off. The encryption was almost half way done. Now the BitLocker encrypted drive is not accessible in My Computer and disk management shows it as unknown partition. The data is extremely important, so I dont want to resolve in formatting the drive. Is there a way to recover partial BitLocker encrypted drive?

In this situation, the drive is partially encrypted by BitLocker. Although you are unable to unlock the drive with the password or recovery key, but you still have a chance to recover data.

BitLocker data recovery software

iBoysoft BitLocker Recovery is a professional BitLocker data recovery software. It can recover data from partial BitLocker encrypted drive, recover data after BitLocker drive encryption failed, stuck, etc.

Unlike common data recovery, BitLocker data recovery requires intact BitLocker metadata and password or 48-digit BitLocker recovery key to decrypt data from BitLocker encrypted drive..

Tutorial to recover data from a partial BitLocker encrypted drive

Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft BitLocker Recovery on your Windows computer.

Step 2: Select the partial BitLocker encrypted drive and click Next.

BitLocker encrypted drive data recovery software

Step 3: Enter the password or 48-digit BitLocker recovery key.

iBoysoft BitLocker Recovery - Enter BitLocker recovery key or password

Step 4: Scan the data from the partial BitLocker encrypted drive.

Scan data from corrupted BitLocker encrypted drive

Step 5: After the scan is complete, you can preview the documents, photos, audios, and videos and determine if your lost files are recoverable.

Recover data from corrupted BitLocker encrypted drive

Step 6: Select your needed files and click Recover to start recovery process.

Step 7: Manually check the recovered files.

This manual check step is very important when recovering data from a partial BitLocker encrypted drive. Partially BitLocker encrypted drive means some files have been encrypted, while other files have not been encrypted.

BitLocker drive encryption is a disk level encryption solution, there is no encryption mark in the files, so you have to manaully check the recovered files when recovering data from a partial BitLocker encrypted drive.

Step 8: If you find some recovered files cannot be opened, check "Revert decryption" option under Help menu and recover them again.