How Do You Recover An Encrypted Partition?

I was reformatting one of my extra hard drives with Windows DiskPart and accidentally selected the wrong hard drive.

I used the clean command, but it wasn't long before I realized I cleaned the wrong one. I only cleaned the drive, I did not format it or tool with it in anyway.

The drive I wiped had two partitions on it, one was unencrypted and the other was encrypted with TrueCrypt. Is it possible to recover my encrypted partition? I do not have a backup of the header, but I've heard it's possible.

If anyone can shed some light on the situation, or point me in the right direction, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

KaveElite

Posted 2014-06-13T09:29:38.930

Reputation: 11

If you deleted the partition then nothing can be done. – Ramhound – 2014-06-13T10:27:52.060

If you deleted the encrypted partition then nothing can be done. The unencrypted partition can be restored using the proper tools. – Ramhound – 2014-06-13T10:48:34.480

From what I understand, unless the partition is overwritten with data, or is formatted, it should be possible to recover the encrypted partition. Thank you for the response! – KaveElite – 2014-06-13T11:09:58.513

How can any tool except TrueCrypt read the data in order to recover it? The partition and all data withn it is random noise to any other tool except TrueCrypt. – Ramhound – 2014-06-13T11:13:08.120

Don't ask me, look it up. If I understood how it were possible, I wouldn't be asking. – KaveElite – 2014-06-13T11:20:24.840

1How about you supply what you read exactly? You are the one who wants to understand something, I already understand, I don't have to research the subject. – Ramhound – 2014-06-13T11:23:38.477

1The partition is cleaned... which means it is unallocated. All the data is still on the hard drive. Inside of disk management, the 100 GB partition space is still there. It has not been modified at all. Nothing has been written over the data on the hard drive. – KaveElite – 2014-06-14T01:34:41.710

First find/buy a large usb disk, boot on a linux livecd, and backup a full image of the ENTIRE disk those partitions were on (ex: /dev/sdc ). Cooy that backupbto a 2nd backup disk so you have 2 copies on 2 differen external disks. Then wipe the backuped disk, and in windows try to exactly redefine the partition table as it was. Then on linux livecd exsctly restore only the exact bytes corresponding to each partitions (not any mbr or fat, as the backup contained a cleaned one) (tricky). Then truecrypt should work again – Olivier Dulac – 2014-06-15T07:53:41.023

There are only two Acronis utilities on HBCD, and I gave another free option. What's wrong with that?! – EliadTech – 2014-06-13T10:30:47.210

You're right. I've edited my post. – EliadTech – 2014-06-13T11:05:08.210

Could you include some instruction for me to proceed? I've never encountered a situation like this before. – KaveElite – 2014-06-13T11:15:46.250

@KaveElite - EliadTech's answer is incomplete. Acronis Disk Director nor TestDisk will be unable to recover the encrypted partition. – Ramhound – 2014-06-13T11:24:44.100

How are you so sure of this? Have you encountered this situation before? It seems you're shooting down everyone's attempt instead of providing a solution. – KaveElite – 2014-06-13T11:27:44.227

@Ramhound Why not? There's no need for the program to actually read the encrypted contents, only recover the MBR, and everything should be right in place. – EliadTech – 2014-06-13T11:28:16.713

@Kaveelite I can't tell you exactly, because I can't test it right now. But it should be fairly easy, since it's GUI is quite simple - just look for Partition recovery. – EliadTech – 2014-06-13T11:29:46.590

How Do You Recover An Encrypted Partition?

Answers