How to Recover a Corrupted Drive protected by BitLocker

To recover a corrupted drive that has been protected by BitLocker, a Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) help desk user must create a recovery key package file. This package file can be copied to the computer that contains the corrupted drive and then used to recover the drive. To accomplish this, use the following procedure.

To Recover a Corrupted Drive

  1. Open the MBAM administration website.

  2. Select Drive Recovery from the navigation pane. Enter the user’s domain name and user name, the reason for unlocking the drive, and the user’s recovery password ID.

    Note   If you are a member of the Help Desk Administrators role, you do not have to enter the user’s domain name or user name.

  3. Click Submit. The recovery key will be displayed.

  4. Click Save, and then select Recovery Key Package. The recovery key package will be created on your computer.

  5. Copy the recovery key package to the computer that has the corrupted drive.

  6. Open an elevated command prompt. To do this, click Start and type cmd in the Search programs and files box. In the search results list, right-click cmd.exe and select Run as Administrator.

  7. At the command prompt, type the following:

    repair-bde <fixed drive> <corrupted drive> -kp <location of keypackage> -rp <recovery password>

    Note   For the <fixed drive> in the command, specify an available storage device that has free space equal to or larger than the data on the corrupted drive. Data on the corrupted drive is recovered and moved to the specified fixed drive.

Performing BitLocker Management with MBAM