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Access BitLocker Encrypted Drive on another PC and Mac

By Michael | Last Updated

What is BitLocker? According to Wikipedia, BitLocker is the full disk encryption feature that applies to Microsoft Windows. When you build up the BitLocker encryption for the drive, you will set the password as well as create the recovery key file. So, if we do not have the password, how can we access the BitLocker encrypted drive on another computer? Here we will introduce two best ways to access BitLocker encrypted drive on another computer by utilizing the recovery key, including both Windows and Mac laptop.

  1. How to Unlock Encrypted Drive on another Windows PC
  2. How to Access BitLocker Encrypted Drive on Mac

How to Unlock Encrypted Drive on another Windows PC

Step 1: Get a Windows PC that supports BitLocker.

Microsoft added BitLocker feature to the computer from Windows Vista. Therefore, not all Windows computer accepts the BitLocker encryption and decryption process. You can choose the computer in following systems:

  • Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7
  • Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1
  • Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 10
  • Windows Server 2008 and later

In the following, I will use the Windows 10 Pro version laptop as an example.

Step 2: Inserted the drive into the Windows 10 laptop and open it.

You need to connect the encrypted drive with the Windows 10 laptop and open it. Then you will get the password and recovery key option. If you forgot the password, you can click the Enter recovery key option.

enter recovery key option

Step 3: Enter the recovery key to unlock the drive.

In this interface, you need to directly enter the 48-digit recovery key to unlock the drive. If you backup the recovery file online, it woudl be easy for you to copy the key. After that, the encrypted drive can be unlocked in seconds.

enter 48-digit recovery key to unlock the drive

How to Access BitLocker Encrypted Drive on Mac

By default, we are unable to open the encrypted drive on Mac computer. But with BitLocker Genius,everything will be possible. This software enables you to access BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac smoothly.

Step 1: Start BitLocker Genius and get the BitLocker encrypted drive connected.

After the software is downloaded and installed, you can insert the BitLocker encrypted drive into Mac computer firstly. When you start the software, you will see that it detected your drive is encrypted in BitLocker way.

Detect the encrypted drive on Mac with BitLocker Genius

Step 2: Select the drive and click the Unlock button.

When you do nothing on the software, you will see the Mount button on the top toolbar. Only when you choose the BitLocker encrypted drive, will the Mount button turn to be the Unlock button. Click it and you will get the password option and recovery key file option.

choose Use key file option to unlock

Step 3: Import the recovery key file to unlock the drive.

Here, we will use the recovery key file to unlock the drive on Mac. The most important thing is that you have the recovery key file kept on the cloud or anywhere so that you can download it on Mac. When it comes to the recovery key file, it is necessary to give some explanations. When you enabled BitLocker on your drive before, the system has automatically generated the recovery file that stored the recovery key for you, just as the screenshot below.

Unlock BitLocker drive with recovery key on Mac

Step 4: Click the Mount button to access BitLocker drive.

After you added the recovery file, it is time to unlock the drive by clicking the Mount button. In seconds, you can get the unlocked drive on Mac desktop. Of course, you can access the drive to manage the data freely now.

mount the BitLocker drive on Mac

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