In the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard select ‘Save to a USB flash drive’ and chose the USB device you want to save to.Īfter choosing the USB device you want to save the Recovery Key file to, click Save and then Finish in the BitLocker Drive encryption wizard.In the newly opened window click ‘Back up your recovery key’.In Windows Explorer, right click on any BitLocker encrypted drive and click on Manage BitLocker.

This could also be a Windows PE rescue media USB stick. You can then save BitLocker Encryption Key files (.BEK) and/or BitLocker password TXT files to the root of any USB stick. Unlocking BitLocker encrypted drives using a USB stickĪutomatically unlocking encrypted drives when PE starts may present an unacceptable security risk for some users.Īutomatic unlocking requires no user intervention and the Macrium Reflect boot menu is able to access encrypted drives without password entry.Īn alternative method is to de-select the Automatically unlock BitLocker encrypted drives option in the Rescue Media Builder: When Windows PE starts any BitLocker locked drives that were attached when the recovery media was created it will automatically unlock them. In the Rescue Media Builder select Advanced then Add BitLocker Support and Automatically unlock BitLocker Volumes.

Macrium Reflect can include the components and decryption keys necessary to automatically unlock Microsoft BitLocker encrypted drives in Windows PE. Automatically unlocking BitLocker encrypted drives In addition, restoring to an unlocked drive will retain the encryption status of the drive when rebooting. Unlocking the drive in Windows PE enables intelligent sector copy imaging and cloning, RapidDelta Restore (RDR), and also free access to the drive's contents using PE Explorer.

The partition will restore without problems but will require re-encrypting on reboot. Note : It isn't absolutely necessary to unlock a BitLocker encrypted drive when restoring an image of the encrypted partition.

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