How to Wipe a BitLocker Drive on Windows 11 [Complete Guide]

BitLocker is a Windows volume encryption feature used to encrypt your drives using a password and recovery key. When a drive is encrypted by BitLocker, all data on the drive won’t be accessed without the BitLocker password and recovery key.

Sometimes, however, you may want to erase BitLocker drives for sales or other reasons. Can you wipe a BitLocker drive without a recovery key? Find the answer in the following part.

Can You Wipe a BitLocker Drive

Yes, you can. However, if you want to keep all data on the drive, you cannot erase a BitLocker encrypted disk without the recovery key. This is because you won’t be able to decrypt the drive and access its data without the key. If you don’t need the data any longer, you can directly wipe the disk using Windows tools or a professional disk wiper.

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What Does It Mean to Wipe BitLocker Drive

Erasing a BitLocker drive will destroy all data and make it unrecoverable, including the recovery key associated with the drive. Essentially speaking, a secure erase process will remove all traces of the previously stored data and recovery key. It is a secure method to remove all data on the drive. If you don’t know how to wipe a BitLocker drive on Windows 11, move to the following part.

How to Wipe a BitLocker Drive on Windows 11

Here I provide 3 applicable methods to erase BitLocker drives on Windows 11. You can choose the preferred one from them.

Before You Do

As discussed above, wiping a BitLocker drive will delete all data on it. If you still need some personal data, make sure to make a backup before wiping. To do that, you can decrypt the drive first and then back up its data.

Here, I strongly recommend you use MiniTool ShadowMaker. It’s an expert backup utility that can back up personal data, partitions, USB drives, operating systems, and even hard disks to another location. Besides, it can create a system image and revert your computer to an earlier state.

Here’s how to unlock the drive and back up your files.

Step 1. Open File Explorer by pressing the Win + E keys, right-click the BitLocker drive, and select Unlock Drive.

Step 2. Input your BitLocker password in it and click Unlock to decrypt the drive. After that, you can access its data.

Step 3. Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker to enter its main interface, go to the Backup section, click SOURCE, and select Folders and Files. Highlight the files or folders you want to back up and click OK.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 4. Click DESTINATION, select the drive that you want to store the backup on, and then click OK > Back Up Now. This will create a backup image file on the target drive.

Step 5. Go to the Restore tab, select the image file, and click Restore. Then follow the on-screen prompts to complete the process.

After that, you can erase BitLocker drives without any concerns.

Method 1. Wipe BitLocker Drive via DiskPart

DiskPart is a command-line disk partitioning utility built on Windows 2000 and later Microsoft systems. It can format a drive and wipe a hard disk using certain commands. To erase a disk completely, you can run the “clean all” command as it can securely erase all data on the drive and overwrite each sector with zeros.

Sep 1. Press the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box, type diskpart in it, and press Enter. Then click on Yes in the UAC window to further confirm it.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, type the following commands in order and hit Enter after each one.

• list disk
• select disk # (# stands for the number of the disk to wipe)
• clean all

If you just want to wipe a drive using DiskPart, you can input the commands below instead and press Enter after each one to carry them out.

• list disk
• select disk # (replace # with the exact disk number)
• list partition
• select partition * (replace * with the partition number you want to wipe)
• delete partition override (this command can delete a partition even if it is protected)

Well, if you want to continue overwriting the partition, you’d better create a new partition and format it by running the commands below:

• create partition primary
• select partition 1
• format fs=ntfs quick

After running all the above commands, the BitLocker drive should be wiped safely.

Method 2. Wipe BitLocker Drive via Disk Management

Disk Management is a Windows built-in hard drive management program that can perform various tasks on hard disk drives. It can also help you wipe BitLocker drives on Windows 11. To do that, you can perform a full format of the drive and overwrite it.

Step 1. Right-click the Start icon at the bottom screen and select Disk Management.

Step 2. Right-click the BitLocker encrypted drive and select Format.

Step 3. In the pop-up window, set up the volume label, file system, and allocation unit size. Then untick the box of Perform a quick format and click OK to fully format the drive. If you want to erase a BitLocker encrypted disk completely, you can format other encrypted drives with the same steps and overwrite the disk several times.

Now, you may find that the above two methods are time-consuming and inefficient, which is not friendly to beginners. More importantly, the deleted data is still possible to be recoverable with specialized data recovery software. Is there an secure method to erase BitLocker drives? Of course, yes. Let’s keep going.

Method 3. Wipe BitLocker Drive via MiniTool Partition Wizard

To securely erase a BitLocker encrypted disk, I strongly suggest that you use MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is an all-in-one partition disk manager that wipes a drive with 5 different wiping levels. Once wiped, data cannot be recovered by any data recovery solutions.

In addition, the program can help you partition hard drives, change cluster size, rebuild MBR, migrate Windows OS to SSD, check disk performance, analyze disk space usage, convert MBR to GPT without data loss, and so on.

Here’s how to wipe a BitLocker drive using MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 1. Click the Download button below to get the software package, run the executable file, and follow the on-screen instructions to install it on your computer.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2. Run the software to enter its main interface, select the BitLocker encrypted drive, and click Wipe Partition from the left panel. Alternatively, you can right-click the drive and choose Wipe Partition from the context menu.

Step 3. In the pop-up window, you will see a list of 5 wiping levels. The higher the wiping method you select, the longer it will take. Once selected, click OK to continue.

Step 4. Click Apply to execute this process. After that, it will remove every sector on the drive.

How to Wipe a BitLocker Encrypted C Drive

Well, if you want to wipe the BitLocker encrypted C drive for reinstalling Windows, you can use the MiniTool’s Bootable Media Builder. It can create a bootable USB drive so that you can boot the computer even if it is unbootable and wipe the C drive.

Here’s how to do that:

MiniTool Partition Wizard DemoClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1. Launch the software to enter its main interface and click on Bootable Media from the upper right corner.

Step 2. Then you can create a bootable CD/DVD/USB drive using an ISO file, USB drive, and CD/DVD. Choose one according to your situation. Here, I take the USB flash drive for example.

Step 3. When the bootable drive is created, restart your computer and press the F2 or Delete key to enter BIOS. Set the USB drive as the first boot option by changing the boot order. Then your computer will reboot from the drive.

Step 4. Follow the on-screen prompts to enter the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard and wipe the encrypted C drive with the same steps I showed above.

Is it tricky to erase a BitLocker encrypted disk on Windows? MiniTool Partition Wizard makes it super easy! It can easily erase a hard disk with 5 wiping methods.Click to Tweet

Wrapping Things Up

To sum up, this post focuses on how to wipe a BitLocker drive with 3 methods. You can choose the Windows tools or MiniTool Partition Wizard to do that. If you want to securely erase a drive, I highly suggest you choose the MiniTool software because it offers more wiping methods than the Windows tool.

If you have any questions or feedback about the MiniTool software, contact us via [email protected], and we will give you a reply as soon as possible.

How to Wipe a BitLocker Drive FAQ

Here, I summarize some frequently asked questions related to the topic. Hope they are useful for you.

Does formatting a drive remove BitLocker?

Of course, yes. Formatting a drive will remove the BitLocker encryption, alongside the BitLocker recovery key and all data on the drive. However, the data could be recovered by specified software. If you want to make the data unrecoverable, you can erase the drive.

Will resetting a PC remove BitLocker?

Yes. BitLocker uses a recovery key to encrypt your hard drive. Resetting a PC will format the system drive and delete all data on it, including BitLocker recovery key and passwords.

Can I cancel BitLocker encryption?

You cannot directly cancel the BitLocker encryption process once it has started. This is because there is no “cancel” option for the BitLocker encryption. You can disable BitLocker or suspend it for encryption.

Where to find the BitLocker recovery key?

BitLocker recovery key is a special set of 48-digit numerical passwords that can be stored in different places, including a Microsoft account, a USB flash drive, a TXT file, or a paper document you printed.