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 Post subject: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 8th, 2017, 1:32 
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Joined: July 8th, 2017, 1:24
Posts: 2
Location: London
Hi guys.

I really hope I haven't messed up too badly here, but I hope I can recover something from Drive D: (WD2003FZEX Western Digital 2TB HDD) in my computer (Windows 10 Pro).

I used Eraser (from Heidi) to try and format drive E: (my other drive which I wanted to delete) and erase any data. I started the process and, somehow, I must have selected drive D: by mistake! No good. I panicked and switched off my computer about 10 seconds after the process started (when programs started to crash). When I switched my computer back on again I used Windows Disk Management to allocate space to the drive, then did a QUICK format to make it viewable in This PC. It now shows as an empty and unencrypted format with no data. Realizing I'm probably making a mistake I've decided to just stop what I'm doing, switch off the computer, and remove the hard drive.

Is there anything I can do to recover the data? I have the encryption key and password to BitLocker, it's just no longer showing up. Recovery programs don't seem to show anything (probably because any data I have is on an encypted but hidden partition). I really hope I can fix this. I'm happy to pay for data recovery as the information held is of great sentimental value to me, not to mention thousands of hours of work files that I have no backup of.

Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 8th, 2017, 7:17 
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Joined: October 21st, 2007, 8:48
Posts: 1631
Prepare a destination drive, download M3 bit loacker, provide your password/recovery key and do a deep scan for your patient drive.
Good luck


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 Post subject: Re: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 8th, 2017, 19:22 
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Joined: July 8th, 2017, 1:24
Posts: 2
Location: London
Unfortunately, M3 Bitlocker can't seem to find the partition. The D: drive M3 finds is the new, empty one. It can't locate the Bitlocker partition. I'm trying TestDisk to recover it, but if anyone else has any advice for recovering a partition I'd appreciate it.


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 Post subject: Re: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 8th, 2017, 19:57 
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Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15528
Location: Australia
Data Recovery on a Damaged Hard Disk Encrypted with Bitlocker:
http://woshub.com/data-recovery-on-a-damaged-hard-disk-encrypted-with-bitlocker/

How to Recover Data From a Disk Encrypted by Bitlocker:
https://hetmanrecovery.com/recovery_news/how-to-recover-data-from-disk-encrypted-bitloker.htm

Contrary to the advice in the above articles, I would refrain from running CHKDSK against the clone (CHKDSK probably wouldn't see the file system in any case). Just run data recovery software against the decrypted data.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.


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 Post subject: Re: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 16th, 2017, 17:41 
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Joined: November 7th, 2015, 13:04
Posts: 170
Location: Austin metro area TX USA
"...When I switched my computer back on again I used Windows Disk Management to allocate space to the drive..." Being a complete newcomer, I have a question:
Would allocating space to the drive change the original partition setup (wherever such is stored) to a different partition setup? If yes, would the OP have to use something like MiniTool Partition Magic version 9 to restore the original partition, then maybe that partition would yield the folders and files?

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"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin revisited


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 Post subject: Re: Recovery of BitLocker Partiion
PostPosted: July 16th, 2017, 17:49 
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Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15528
Location: Australia
The partition table would be located in sector 0 (MBR). However, the OP erased the start of the user area and then formatted it again. Therefore simply restoring sector 0 would be of no avail.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.


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