EFS Decryption Guide: How to Easily Recover Encrypted Files on an NTFS Drive

About Encrypting File System (EFS)

Encrypting File System (EFS) is a core file encryption technology that uses certificates or keys to protect critical and sensitive files on NTFS file system volumes. With EFS in place, unauthorized users are required to request permissions when attempting to access files and folders. Otherwise, Microsoft Windows will deny access to the locked data. If you move an EFS encrypted hard drive to another computer, you also won't be able to access the files on the EFS encrypted device.

EFS is one of the several ways to encrypt individual files and folders in Windows. Here, we mainly discuss the possibilities of how to unlock EFS encrypted files. Visitors looking for how to decrypt BitLocker files or recover files encrypted by ransomware should proceed to the respective pages.

How to Open an EFS Encrypted File

There are two types of people who might need to decrypt EFS: those who have the password, and those who do not because of a mistake or key corruption.

Use password

Files encrypted with EFS show a lock icon. They unlock when you log in with your password.

2. Without using a password

If you forget your password, or if the encryption key becomes corrupted because of a hard disk error, you can use file attributes to decrypt an EFS file.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + E to open File Explorer. Right-click the file, and select Properties.

Step 2: Click on the Security tab, and then click Advanced.

Step 3: Clear the Encrypt content to protect data check box.

How to recover deleted EFS encrypted files

Encrypted files may get lost accidentally due to owner's misoperation, like deletion, disk formatting or virus infection. If you want to recover lost EFS encrypted files, you need to download the Data Recovery Wizard tool to easily retrieve encrypted files from Windows NTFS hard drive, USB flash drive or SD card.

This efficient and easy-to-use EFS Recovery tool offers a simple solution for encrypted file recovery from NTFS drives and external hard disks, provided that you know the encryption password, or it exists in the SAM database (for Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Windows 7, 8). Administrator privileges are required. Green “sample2.txt” is an encrypted file on an NTFS drive.

Step 1. Run tools Data Recovery Wizard. Select the partition where you lost files and click "Scan". The data recovery software supports partition recovery on FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32), exFAT, NTFS, NTFS5, ext2, ext3, HFS+, and ReFS file systems.

Step 2: To quickly locate the lost data from the scan results, you can use the filter or search option.

Step 3: You can preview the files before recovery. Select all the files you need and click "Recover" to retrieve them from the existing partition. Do not save the files to the partition from where you lost data.

Notice:

• Does not work with FAT partitions. All recovered encrypted files must be copied to an NTFS partition. • Can only run on the current Windows system. • The recovered files remain encrypted.