Windows 10: Bitlocker was installed on my Windows 10 Home Computer, and now it is gone. Cannot manage...

I'll try to keep this simple, but I'm not a real techy person so please bear with me. I didn't know Bitlocker was installed on my Dell it's a refurbished computer. I installed a SanDisk SSD named D: Drive Hard Drive in January. Needing more space, I removed the hard drive, installed a new SanDisk SSD Hard Drive named E: Drive. Then I moved D: to an external port. When I tried to access it, Bitlocker had engaged and was asking for a password. After HOURS of searching, I found information on checking Azure AD - WOOHOO! Found the 48 digit password. But when I try to access the drive, I'm getting an error that it's corrupt 2nd screenshot. When I go to Control Panel/Computer Management/Storage/ Disk Management, I can see the drive, and that it's got 953 GB used first screenshot and the properties show it's working problem and there are no issues. How is this even possible if it's corrupt and does that mean there's a chance the drive is salvageable?


I've read that Bitlocker has a recovery option, but when I go to Windows/Setting/Control Panel/Update & Security/Device Encryption, it's showing to be turned off 3rd screenshot. When I select Turn On, the hours glass turns, and then it changes to show it's on. However, there are no options for managing or seeing it. When I select "BitLocker Settings", a screen shows up for a second then the whole Control Panels closes. And Bitlocker is not anywhere in my "Apps".


I downloaded a recovery software and it got most of my documents it even recovered the recycle bin on the drive, but still missing quite a few, and they are renamed by pixel size and some sort of numbering sequence, and they are no longer sorted in the original folders. I do have another program that's been great to remove the duplicates, but it's still a lot of PNG, JPG, PSD, EPS, AI, PowePoint, Word, and Excel files to have to go through to rename and reorganize and not all of the thumbnails were recovered, and PSD doesn't show Thumbnails in File Explorer anyway. And while I'm generally pretty good about doing monthly updates, my dad fell ill and passed away unexpectedly, so my last update was in December, and I lost 6 months of data.


So NOW I'm at my questions and sorry if this has all been too much info. I just don't know what's needed: 1 Does anyone have any suggestions or answers as to how I can get Bitlocker back on my computer reminder: it's Windows 10 Home so doesn't come with it as a standard from what I've read? 2 Will Bitlocker do a recovery of the D: Drive and where would I find out how to do it? and 3 Is there a way to find the BEK file since it wasn't with the Recovery Key and File Explorer didn't find it on my computer during the search? If these things aren't possible, then I'll be reorganizing the files that were restored. I consider myself fortunate that I got most of it back.


Thank you all for your time!

Sherry

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Working with BitLocker Protected Drive on Windows 10 Home Computer

I haven't posted in this forum before, but decided to give it a try as I cannot find the answer anywhere online. I have two computers, one running on Windows 10
Pro and the other on Windows 10
Home. I understand only Windows 10 Pro comes with BitLocker. I have encrypted a removable hard drive using the BitLocker from my Windows 10 Pro machine. When I connect the removable drive to my Windows 10 Home computer, I can open the BitLocker drive
by entering the password and can open any files there, so I assume that although the Windows 10 Home computer does not have BitLocker, it must have at least some sort of BitLocker reader. So far, so good. My question is if I save a new file to the removable
drive from my Windows 10 Home computer will this file be BitLocker-protected, i.e. will it be encrypted? I don't believe it will, but assuming this is correct, what are the implications of having a non-encrypted file saved on a BitLocker protected drive?
Hopefully my question makes sense. Thanks in advance to this forum.

 

Bitlocker on Windows 10 Home

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

To better assist you, please answer the following questions:

1. What exactly is the error message you receive when you try to access the external drive?

2. Did you have Bitlocker enabled in your previous operating system?

Please be informed that BitLocker is not available in Windows 10 home so it is unusual that you are getting a BitLocker alert. To confirm the version of Windows installed in your system, I would suggest you to try the steps below:

1. Press Windows key+ R

2. Type Winver and press enter.

3. Check and let us know the exact version of Windows installed in the operating system.

Get back to us with the response.

 

Bitlocker in Windows 10 Home

So I can't manage bitlocker in Windows 10 Home, but my drive is encrypted with a bitlocker key. How do I get rid of the bitlocker key?