Overcoming BitLocker Troubles: My Data Recovery Journey

Hello, tech enthusiasts! Today I want to share my challenging experience with BitLocker encryption and my quest to recover data from a 2TB NVMe drive. This journey has been anything but straightforward, and I hope my story will provide some insights or assist anyone facing a similar issue.

The Situation

While working on my Windows 10 machine, I decided to enable BitLocker for enhanced security on my 2TB NVMe drive. However, after a routine reboot, I was unexpectedly greeted with the BitLocker recovery screen. To my dismay, even after entering the correct recovery key, the system continuously looped back without successfully booting into Windows.

With no immediate resolution in sight, I decided to take a different approach. I booted from a Linux live environment and utilized TestDisk in an attempt to access my data. The software detected the 2TB NTFS partition, but oddly enough, it was marked as deleted. After conducting a deep search, I managed to write a new partition table, which allowed Windows to recognize the drive once again. However, this victory was short-lived as I was soon met with a “missing BCD” error (0xc0000098).

Troubleshooting Attempts

Armed with a Windows recovery USB, I attempted to repair the bootloader in the hope of overcoming this challenge. Regrettably, BitLocker continued to throw errors when I tried to unlock the drive, displaying a frustrating “parameter incorrect” message. I then turned to Dislocker, a tool designed for accessing BitLocker-encrypted drives in Linux. Unfortunately, it couldn’t parse the volume header, likely due to the partition table change corrupting the BitLocker metadata.

Current Status

At this point in my recovery efforts, it seems that recovering the BitLocker encryption is no longer feasible—both Dislocker and Windows are unable to decrypt the drive. However, in a stroke of luck, I’ve begun using PhotoRec to recover raw files from the 2TB disk, which has yielded positive results. I’ve managed to extract thousands of images and documents, albeit without their original folder structures or filenames.

Seeking Assistance

Now, I find myself at a crossroads. I’m searching for any tools or methods that could help reconstruct the file headers or perhaps provide a more organized file recovery system. If anyone has recommendations or experiences with similar recovery challenges, I would greatly appreciate your insights!

Thank you for reading about my