I enabled bitlocker by editing the group policy. At tha time, I encrypted my internal and external hard drive. The internal drive saved the key to my usb drive and by default, the external drive save it in my Documents folder. I also selected the auto-unlock option to prevent myself from having to key my password each time I used the drive. Due to performance issues after upgrading from Vista, I decided to reinstall Windows 7. I copied all of my data over to the external drive from the Documents folder, right clicked th external drive from the Computer folder and assumed by removing the password, which is allowed since the auto-unlock setting was enabled (not the best idea for those who might be considering this) and thought that Bitlocker was disabled from the external drive and was not aware that it had to be turned off from the Control Panel System and Security area. I proceeded to install Ubuntu which repartitioned the hard drive.I was curious to see if the new beta release fixed a kernel panic issue I was experiencing and it did not. I now went back to Windows 7 and started the installation. This repartitioned the drive again and everything was reinstalled. I go to plug in my external drive and now I'm prompted for the 48 digit recovery key. Ok, I pull out my jump drive to find that I don't have it. Since it was in my Documents folder and I copied all of that data to the external drive prior to the reinstall, its now encrypted on the drive and I've basically lost all of the data on it.I was able to locate a Microsoft employee through a blog and my email was sent to another associate. At this point I'm being told I'm out of luck and without the key I'll never regain entry. I've tried a hex editor, the active directory on server 2003/2008/2008 R2 by adding the pc with the drive plugged in and still no luck. Please tell me there is some way to recover the data. I offered the employee a copy of thedrive receipt, a copy of the drive registration, and could identify files on the drive but here I am. Can anyone help me? Thank you.

No, without the cert you cannot gain access to the drive, by design, and as expected behavior. If you could, there would not be a reason for the encryption to exist at all.Rating posts helps other users Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Mark,I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question. I understand what you are saying, I just find it a hard to believe that with all of the proof of ownership and use, thatno one within Microsoft can provide the recovery key. If I lost the key to my car, with proof of ownership I can have a key made by the dealership. I am not arguing the fact that this would be a "backdoor" in to the bitlocker encryption, but I cannot be the first person this has happened to and I doubt I will be the last person that this could happen to. After experiencing this, I can only imagine what could possibly happen in acorporation if something is not setup correctly and someone loses the data on their external storage device. I hope that someone within Microsoft working on the Bitlocker team comes across this post and could use this example as a reason not to default the storage of the recovery key in the Documents folder on the hard drive and either use the TPM or require the use of a usb drive to save the key. If I had a complete hard drive failure, the key would have been lost as well and I'd be in the same situation.For the average end user, disabling Bitlocker to go on the external hard drive is not a straight forward process. I thought I had done everything needed to recover my drive once I had reinstalled the operating system but now my key is encrypted on the drive and I'm out of luck. I have lost countless pictures that I'll never be able to recover, personal documents, and other miscellaneous documents of value due to this. Let this be a lesson for users out there that disaster recovery consists of formatting your drive and starting over. I'm disappointed in myself for not taking the time to fully learn how this functionality works and the fact that even with every peice of proof possible showing my ownership and usage of the drive, that I cannot obtain help from Microsoft. Thank you for your time Mark,Tony

When working with BitLocker (or any other drive/folder crypt mechanism), always keep copies of your keys & recovery passwords stored offline. This is so easy to do. Select all of your key files in Explorer, right-click and send them all to a compressed folder (which is actually a file itself). Now, simply encrypt this zipped file with a strongencrypting program ( I use gpg )using a long pass-phrase and then save the resulting encrypted file to an online email, another computer, thumb drive in the back of your closet, etc. etc. etc. Mr. Ferguson is correct. Without the key, you're data is eternally irretrievable.

Thank you for your response. I've come to the conclusion that the data is locked and I'm not going to be able to access it unless by some miracle I can guess the 48 digit password. I offer the suggestion to Microsoft that if the TPM has been disabled, that you default the location to save the recovery key file to a USB drive such as how regular Bitlocker works? Provide the user with an option to save it in the Documents folder only after the USBdrive is rejected by the user. It would also be nice to right click the Bitlocker To Go drive, select Manage Bitlocker and have the ability to turn it off in that location. Yes the control panel works, but from a usability point, adding this may be benficial for many people.

Hi Mark, I've kept the Bitlocker Recovery Password that is a text file. I decided to decrypt my external and while it was operating, my external felt from my hand but still connected to my laptop. After that, the decryption operation failed and I've not accessed my external and windows said me to want format my external. When I plug my external to Laptop, also I can't access to Bitlocker menu in control panel and I can't use diskpart, diskcheck and other programs about harddisks, system is just freezing. When I try to fix it by using bde-repair, system doesn't accept the correct recovery key and wants "KeyPackage". What is this? If I have this package I'll have a chance to recover my files. Last nigth, I tried to boot system using Windows7 DVD, Bitlocker recovery window suddenly appeared when I unpluged my external because of system was freezing again. I entered the correct recovery key but it said it was incorrect! What do you think about this situation? If I format the disk can I access my files or decrypting operation will be continue? Thank you.

Mark you seem to be the man.... OK, I've been working on a minor problem that just ballooned into a huge one. I have been having problems since upgrading from Vista Ult 64bit to W7 Ult 64bit. My original problem has to do with the inability to transfer large files to my 2TB external hard drive (through esata or usb). I have applied Microsoft's patch for the well publicized problem, but it didn't fix the issue for me. My 2TB external is encrypted with bitlocker and I have the password and bitlocker key. Everything was working fine (except the inability to transfer files over 100MB without timing out). I decided to "turn off" bitlocker on my external drive thinking it may be contributing to my transfer problems. About 5 seconds into the process, my computer completely froze. After about 10 minutes of waiting I restarted and now cannot access the files on my external HD. Windows recognizes my external when I turn it on and I can enter the bitlocker password. The icon in My Computer switches to unlocked, but when I click to view the files on the drive it spins for a few minutes only to come back with error "file or directory is corrupted". I ran a chkdskr/ X: and went through that process which completed successfully, but still not able to view the files. I'm praying Bitlocker has a recovery function if power is lost, and I only got into about 5 seconds of decryption before my computer froze (which it does everytime the external is connected because of stupid Windows 7 usb issue). This is extremely frustrating that I can't transfer files to my external HDD anymore and now I can't access the existing data! Any help would be appreciated, I've read forums for the last 6 hours and gotten zero results. I have tried just about everything I can think of, I've run the computer on 2GB of memory to see if I can regain continual connectivity to my external drive (heard that it was 4GB and over causing problems) but that didn't work either. It shows that all my data is still on the drive but I can't access it. Thanks, below are a summary of my specs 2.66 Quad Core nVidia nforce 680i motherboard ATI HD5870 1GB 8GB corsair DDR2 750GB internal, 2 TB SimpleTech pro duo drive connected through esata or usb Windows7 Ultimate 64-bit 850W power supply

Try to turn off Bit locker and decrypt, and you should be able to access your drive