Truecrypt Drive appears empty?

Question

I have a 2TB storage drive which I have been using with full-volume encryption via Truecrypt. Truecrypt normally attempts to mount the drive at login, and I simply enter the pw, and the new volume shows up in My Computer as it's own drive.

After putting this encrypted drive in my new computer, the drive is showing up as completely blank, showing as 100% free space (not mounted in TC). When I attempt to manually select the volume in TC to mount it, it gives me the "Incorrect password or not a TrueCrypt Volume" error.

I used the "Restore Volume Header" feature in Volume Tools, and now it will successfully mount, but the mounted drive appears completely blank, and windows gives a "you need to format this drive" error upon opening it.

Does anyone know how to properly mount my encrypted drive on a new system? Why would the drive show as blank?

(Windows 7 ultimate 64, new install)

TLDR: Truecrypt volume is blank when I mount on new computer; wtf.

Answer 1

This is frequently a symptom of a damaged or corrupted filesystem, typically because your MFT is unreadable for some reason. This can happen on unencrypted volumes as well, and generally, you'd repair it by running chkdsk, however, you might be in trouble having already restored your volume headers. You can try running chkdsk, and maybe you'll get lucky. If not, you'll have to use a low-level disk tool to try to recover your files and folders (once the volume is mounted) or go to your backups (if you have them).