My windows decided to enable bitlocker without telling me some time in the past. Now some security policy changed and bitlocker locked me out of my work laptop. This is the first time I heard about bitlocker, so I never had a chance to export and save any bitlocker keys. Great feature, overall...
But... I have a veeam backup and a recovery media. I successfully restored my windows partition C: in encrypted state, but still bitlocker asked for the recovery key on startup. Then I proceeded to use diskpart to clean C: and remove bitlocker protection, while leaving my data partition D: untouched!
Now windows boots from an unencrypted C: partition, but I cannot access my data partition D:, as it is still locked. Turning bitlocker on for C: and getting the latest windows updates did not help in this regard.
The backup is 2 weeks old, so I don't want to restore D: and lose 2 weeks of work, at least not yet..![:(]( "Sad")
I don't have a bitlocker key backup anywhere, because I use a local account for windows login, and I could not find any .bek files.
"manage-bde -protectors D: -get" does not show a numeric password, only a filename of a .bek file that is nowhere to be found. I doubt it ever existed, because it would be somewhere in my backup, wouldn't it?
But now I read the Veeam Recovery Media can unlock a bitlocked drive/partition in order to restore data and not alter the overall state of the target from encrypted to unencrypted.
So... the recovery process somehow uses the bitlocker key!? How? Is the key stored on the Veeam Recovery Media? Is it possible to extract the key so I can use it to unlock my D: partition?
Help would greatly be appreciated!!
But... I have a veeam backup and a recovery media. I successfully restored my windows partition C: in encrypted state, but still bitlocker asked for the recovery key on startup. Then I proceeded to use diskpart to clean C: and remove bitlocker protection, while leaving my data partition D: untouched!
Now windows boots from an unencrypted C: partition, but I cannot access my data partition D:, as it is still locked. Turning bitlocker on for C: and getting the latest windows updates did not help in this regard.
The backup is 2 weeks old, so I don't want to restore D: and lose 2 weeks of work, at least not yet..
I don't have a bitlocker key backup anywhere, because I use a local account for windows login, and I could not find any .bek files.
"manage-bde -protectors D: -get" does not show a numeric password, only a filename of a .bek file that is nowhere to be found. I doubt it ever existed, because it would be somewhere in my backup, wouldn't it?
But now I read the Veeam Recovery Media can unlock a bitlocked drive/partition in order to restore data and not alter the overall state of the target from encrypted to unencrypted.
So... the recovery process somehow uses the bitlocker key!? How? Is the key stored on the Veeam Recovery Media? Is it possible to extract the key so I can use it to unlock my D: partition?
Help would greatly be appreciated!!
Statistics: Posted by floh.mueller — Jan 25, 2025 11:44 pm
