How to Decrypt BitLocker-Encrypted Drive from Command Line in Windows 10 – 3 steps

This article is about how to Decrypt BitLocker-Encrypted Drive from Command Line in Windows 10. To protect files and folders from unauthorized access, some people encrypt drives with BitLocker in Windows 10, such as hard drives, removable USB drives, etc.

However, this will not be effective if it has been encrypted for a long time, because each time you have to unlock the drive first before you can access it.

So you’ll need to defragment the drive.

In general, to disable BitLocker encrypted drives, you can go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> BitLocker Drive Encryption to disable BitLocker.

But now on this page, I will show another new method to decrypt a BitLocker encrypted drive, using the command line.

This will be very useful, especially if you can’t access the Control Panel for some reason.

How to Decrypt BitLocker-Encrypted Drive from Command Line in Windows 10

Keep your BitLocker recovery key, and follow the next steps.

Step 1: Login to Windows 10 and open command prompt as administrator.

Step 2: Run this command to unlock the BitLocker encrypted drive.

Replace D with your drive letter and replace BitLocker_Recovery_Key with the 48-digit BitLocker recovery key.

The correct BitLocker recovery key will unlock the drive properly.

If your BitLocker recovery key is saved on a computer, you can directly copy the key and paste it into the command prompt.

manage-bde -unlock D: -RecoveryPassword Your_Recovery_key

Step 3: Unlock does not mean decrypt.

To disable a BitLocker encrypted drive, you need to use the following command line to disable BitLocker encryption on this drive.

decrypt BitLocker encrypted drive
Do not close the application too soon.

The decryption process takes a few minutes, depending on the size of your disk.

You can use manage-bde-status frequently to check the publishing progress.

When “Percentage Encrypted” reaches 0.0%, it means that the BitLocker encrypted drive has been successfully disabled and you can close it easily.