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I ran into a blue screen of death that is non repairable on my windows 10 pro OS. I had a backup drive connected which I need to view the back up drive. I connected it to my laptop pc which has windows 7 home on it. When I go to my drives and try to open the backup drive, a message says unable to open. It gives no offer to enter a key. A MS level two tech said it should offer that so I can view the drive. Can anyone please help? Thanks, Danny

Danny d
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2 Answers2

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Bitlocker requires a PRO version of Windows and it has to be the SAME or NEWER version of Windows.
So if the drive is made using Windwos 10 Pro, you are going to need another Windows 10 Pro system to unlock it.

So re-install your main machine (it is broken anyway now) and then re-connect the backup-drive.

I do hope your still have the Bitlocker password used for that backup-drive because without that password you won't be able to open it.

Tonny
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You need a higher version of Windows 7 than the Home version to unlock a Bitlocker disk (hoping that you have saved the recovery key).

Your options are:

  • Find a computer with a non-Home version to save your data
  • Repair the old computer (if possible)
  • Create virtual machine with a non-Home version of Windows 7.

The latest option will result with a trial version of Windows 7, but that might be enough to save the data.

For example, you could use VMware and do Adding Physical Disks to a Virtual Machine.

For getting a suitable Windows 7 ISO, see the post
Where can I download Windows 7 (legally from Microsoft)?

harrymc
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