Windows 11’s Auto-Enabled BitLocker Locks User Out of Terabytes of Data — Here’s What Happened

Microsoft first introduced BitLocker drive encryption with Windows Vista back in 2007, though it was initially limited to the Enterprise and Ultimate editions. Over the years, it evolved into a core security feature of Windows. With Windows 11, Microsoft went a step further — BitLocker now activates automatically when users sign in with a Microsoft account during the setup process (OOBE). While this auto-encryption aims to secure user data, it has also caused some serious unintended consequences.

That’s exactly what happened to one unfortunate Reddit user, u/Toast_Soup (referred to as “Soup”), who ended up losing access to their data after a Windows reinstall.

Soup noticed their PC was lagging and decided to perform a clean installation of Windows. Their system had six drives — including the boot drive and two large backup drives (D: and E:), each with around 3TB of data. But once the reinstall was complete, those two drives appeared to have vanished. They were locked by BitLocker encryption, despite Soup never manually turning the feature on.

Unaware that Windows 11 automatically encrypts drives linked to a Microsoft account, Soup didn’t have the necessary BitLocker recovery keys — keys they didn’t even know existed

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