Windows 11's BitLocker encryption permanently locks 3TB of a user's backups — "Filled my PC with more spyware and viruses than I can count"

From as early as Windows Vista, Microsoft's operating systems started shipping with an important security feature called BitLocker. It's a feature designed to protect sensitive data and information from unauthorized access through encryption.

BitLocker is enabled by default in Windows 11 when you first sign in or set up a device with a Microsoft account. Last year, the company made this change while releasing Windows 11, version 24H2.

The Windows update also made BitLocker accessible to a broad range of devices because it's less demanding in terms of hardware requirements, including Windows 11 Pro and Home. Users no longer need Hardware Security Test Interface (HSTI) or Modern Standby to access the feature.

But if the past few months are anything to go by, storage and backing up your data on the cloud are very sensitive topics. Remember when a OneDrive user was locked out of "30 years' worth of photos and work" without any support? As it happens, a Reddit user recently shared an unfortunate incident where they ended up losing access to 3TB worth of games and backups.

The user indicated that they'd noticed that their PC was a tad laggy, prompting them to reinstall Windows 11. They further indicated that they'd never enabled BitLocker before since they didn't necessarily need it. However, when they reinstalled Windows 11, two out of the six drives in the gaming PC (built on an AORUS B550 Elite AX v2 motherboard, a Ryzen 7 5700X3D CPU, 64GB of RAM, and a 12GB GeForce RTX 3060 GPU) were encrypted.

pcmasterrace from r/pcmasterrace/comments/1o9i0or/bitlocker_turned_itself_on_3tb_of_games_and

"Can't access 3TB of data! It's asking for a key but I never set one up," Toast Soup added on Reddit. "Google only gives results if your boot drive is Bitlocked, not a D: or E: storage drive. I ran some data recovery software but it shows zero files to recover."

"Help me Reddit. You're my only hope...," the user indicated. Perhaps more concerningly, Toast Soup admitted that they dug themselves deeper into the rabbit hole, "using every damn data retrieval program" in a bid to regain access to the encrypted drives with the games and backups. "I went to a lot of sketchy sites and downloaded torrents that I'm sure filled my PC with more spyware and viruses than I can count."

Eventually, they decided to perform a clean install of Windows 11, but the BitLocker screen reappeared. Luckily, they had the key for this one. While the user was able to get back to Windows, the storage drives remained encrypted. Ultimately, the user lost hope and pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Per Tom's Hardware's testing, BitLocker is also a resource-intensive security tool that can slow down random read/write speeds of the affected SSDs by up to 45%. The outlet indicated that this was because the tool forces your processor to encrypt and decrypt every single thing.

Based on this premise, it is highly likely that Toast Soup had BitLocker enabled by default in Windows 11, especially after Microsoft made the change when releasing Windows 11, version 24H2. The laggy device is a major telltale sign.

However, it's still obviously unfortunate that the user couldn't access the key to unlock the encrypted drives. This is despite numerous attempts, including trying to recover the key from their Microsoft account. Be careful with your backups.

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