Dell Windows 10 computer recovery boots with X: drive but no C: drive or user data

The X: drive is the drive letter usually given to the WinPE OS which is a type of limited “live” version of Windows that is also used for the recovery environment.

From the perspective of the recovery environment, X: is the main drive but it is not related to your actual OS and data in any way.

Typically WinPE will mount your actual OS to C: or D: where you can perform recovery procedures.

You said, “The system prompts for a recovery key for many of the operations...” so the main OS is encrypted by BitLocker.

Because of this it is impossible to mount the drive or perform any recovery on the drive without BitLocker accepting your recovery key. If you can’t get a recovery key to work you can’t access the drive. This could be because you have the wrong recovery key, or the drive is corrupt due to damage.

Drive encryption adds a huge complication to recovering data from a failing drive.

I've had this issue several times using cheap laptop hard drives. The hard drive fails to boot the OS and the disk is probably damaged, but somehow it can still do basic disk operations.

I bought an internal hard drive to usb adapter , and was able to read and copy the hard drive's contents from another computer using the same OS. They cost around $20, well worth it, just make sure the hardware is compatible with your machine. Good luck.

X: drive is for the recovery environment of windows. The C: drive contains the main OS and your personal files. The X: drive contains files to boot to the recovery environment and the recovery tools. they are kept separate so even if the main os (which in this case is Windows 10) is corrupted and cannot boot, the X: partition will allow it to boot to the recovery mode and you can do recovery of the OS from there. as for the failed hard disk, just leave it it won't work. it's too damaged already so just get a new disk or new pc and just accept the data loss. hope this helps!