By booting from a USB drive, you can now do the following: Starting with version 7.05, Elcomsoft System Recovery can be used to unlock BitLocker volumes when you boot from the ESR USB drive. However, subsequent steps require either reinstalling Windows or backing up the data off the encrypted volume. Granted, one can still boot from a Windows recovery disk and mount the encrypted volume by supplying the recovery key. What’s essentially wrong with this approach is that Microsoft offers no straightforward path to reinstate access to the user’s Windows account located on a BitLocker-encrypted system volume even if the backup protector (e.g. The volumes are commonly using TPM (the first protector), while the backup Recovery Key (a 48-character numeric password) is created and stored in the AD, the user’s Microsoft Account, or on the hard disk or removable USB drive.

By default, Windows requires the minimum of two protectors when the user creates an encrypted volume. Multiple combinations of such protectors are available. The follow-up article Unlocking BitLocker: Can You Break That Password? reveals much of the detailed under-the-hood operation of BitLocker we recommend reading that article even if you know about BitLocker.īitLocker volumes may be protected with one or several protectors of various types that can be used together (for tougher security) or in parallel (for easier recovery). That article describes the basics of BitLocker as viewed by the computer user. If you are not familiar with BitLocker encryption, you may find the Introduction to BitLocker: Protecting Your System Disk handy. This isn’t the first article we publish about BitLocker. We are offering a straightforward solution for reinstating access to BitLocker-protected Windows systems with the help of a bootable USB drive. While adding the necessary layer of security, BitLocker also has the potential of locking administrative access to the encrypted volumes if the original Windows logon password is lost. A large number of organizations protect startup disks with BitLocker encryption. BitLocker is Windows default solution for encrypting disk volumes.

Elcomsoft advanced disk catalog