Comment by masfuerte

There was a great blog post a few years ago that reverse engineered the on-disk data structures and demonstrated extracting the key. Of course, I can't find it now.

Microsoft themselves [1] say:

> If a device uses only local accounts, then it remains unprotected even though the data is encrypted.

There is a further condition: if you explicitly enable bitlocker then the key is no longer stored on the disk and it is secure.

When I run "manage-bde -status" on my laptop it says "Key Protectors: None found". If the TPM was being used that would be listed.

Have you tried plugging the disk or ssd from your old laptop into another computer?

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/operating...