How to recover data from an encrypted HDD which was demolished by a "Microsoft Reserved Partition"

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So I reinstalled Windows 7 and apparently something went wrong: during the install I had two drives connected (drive A & B), I selected drive A for Windows to be installed to. Later I noticed that I can't boot with just drive A connected - I also need drive B for it to work (neither does it work with just drive B connected, I need to connect both drives and select drive A as boot first device).

Now here's my problem: before I noticed the problem I connected a third drive (C), disconnected drive B and tried to boot from drive A.
Drive C had two partitions: 100GB of unencrypted unimportant data and about 2,9TB of encrypted (AES with TrueCrypt) important data.
Now it has these two partitions: about 130MB of "Microsoft Reserved Partition" and about 3TB of unallocated data.

I really need that data back. I don't care how much effort, money or time that may require.
(And before you tell me: I had a backup of most data on drive B which doesn't work anymore either because of the same problem - it was a system encrypted drive with Win7)
Currently my next step would be to try out TestCrypt. Any suggestions are welcome.

mYnDstrEAm

Posted 2015-10-29T08:28:33.337

Reputation: 297

Do not install, copy or do anything on drive C. Just to be sure that nothing gets overwritten. Then use TestCrypt to try and recover the data. – Leathe – 2015-10-29T08:45:00.663

1How were the partitions created on drive C? Have you used drive C on the same computer before? What motherboard do you have? – qasdfdsaq – 2015-10-29T16:38:05.150

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Possible duplicate of Recover harddrive data

– Ramhound – 2015-11-17T13:09:05.350

@qasdfdsaq: 1) Honestly I don't know anymore - could be that I used a Linux and GParted for it (I had Win 7 at the time, I think I had to format it with GPT to get the 3TB working). 2) Yes - many times. 3) My motherboard is & was: Gigabyte 775 - GA-P35-DS3. Sorry for taking so long with the reply. This is truly important to me so I would be more than happy for any hint you may have. – mYnDstrEAm – 2015-12-02T14:57:13.323

Answers

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This type of booting issue is quite common. This happens when you have more than one drive connected to the motherboard during the Windows installation process. You can boot normally with that kind of setup if both drives remain not formatted and connected to the mobo, because sometimes Windows writes some of the system files on the second drive, thus making it impossible for you to boot to Windows without one of the HDDs.

As for data recovery, if money is no object, I'd recommend that you go directly for a data recovery company if you can't manage to recover your files via the tool you've used to encrypt them.

Boogieman WD

Posted 2015-10-29T08:28:33.337

Reputation: 11

So does the author recover the data precisely? – Ramhound – 2015-11-17T13:08:50.523

Asked: 2015-10-29T08:28:33.337

Viewed: 277 times

Active: 2015-11-17T12:52:28.430