What the customer needed
The instruction was straightforward: the information on the Surface mattered more than returning the tablet to ordinary use. That distinction shaped the job. Repairing Windows or replacing hardware would not, by itself, make encrypted files readable. The first useful question was whether the authorised BitLocker recovery key was available.
The access barrier
BitLocker encrypts the contents of the drive. A laboratory can diagnose the storage and preserve what it can read, but it cannot turn correctly encrypted data into ordinary files without an authorised key. In this case the key was obtained, allowing the recovery to move from protected sectors to a usable file copy.
The recovery path
Once authorised access had been established, the data was copied from the Surface storage and the recovered set was counted. The case record shows 90.4 GB across 60,504 files. Those figures matter because they describe the delivered result rather than simply saying that a scan “found data”.
The recorded turnaround was approximately one week. The historical charge was £280, but that figure belongs to this completed job and is not a quotation for another Surface or SSD.
The result
The recovery completed successfully. The customer received a usable copy of the protected data after the correct key had enabled access.
What this case teaches
Encryption changes the recovery route. If a Windows device asks for a BitLocker key, preserve the device and search the authorised Microsoft account, company records or printed recovery-key records before resetting or reinstalling anything. A healthy recovery image is still encrypted evidence until the correct key is available.