Mounting BitLocker-Encrypted Windows Drive in Linux

On Linux, you can use the DisLocker tool to access data on a partition that is encrypted with Windows BitLocker. In this example, we’ll show how to decrypt data on a BitLocker partition in Linux.

Install the DisLocker utility using your package manager. On Ubuntu/Debian, run:

$ sudo apt install dislocker

Create two directories. The first directory will be used to mount the NTFS partition:

$ sudo mkdir -p /media/bitlocker

The second directory will contain the decrypted partition:

$ sudo mkdir -p /media/mount

Connect the encrypted device to the Linux host and use fdisk to get the device name:

$ sudo fdisk -l

In our example, this is a USB media drive /dev/sdb.

To decrypt the first partition on an external drive, run:

$ sudo dislocker -V /dev/sdb1 -u -- /media/bitlocker

The utility will ask for your Bitlocker encryption password. To decrypt a partition in read-only mode, add the -r option:

$ sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/sdb1 -u%password% -- /media/bitlocker

If you have a BitLocker recovery key, you need to change the command:

$ sudo dislocker -V /dev/sdb1 -p%RECOVERY_PASSWORD% -- /media/bitlocker

After the command completes, the dislocker-file will appear in the target directory. This file is a virtual NTFS partition

Now you can mount the file to access the decrypted files:

$ sudo mount -o loop /media/bitlocker/dislocker-file /media/mount