I encrypted my OS hard drive with truecrypt then lost the password. How do I fix it?

Discussion in 'encryption problems' started by Alex Cater, Aug 5, 2014.

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  1. Alex Cater

    Alex Cater Registered Member

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    EDIT: How to fix a drive that you encrypted the whole drive and lost the password. (No guarantees. I've only done this on one drive and don't feel like repeating it.)
    1. Wipe it
    2. Clone a working drive on to it. (Cloning is to the problem of it thinking it is not formatted/initialized)
    3. Wipe it again to get a blank drive <- doing this now
    I encrypted my hard drive that had windows on it and did the thing where you have to put in a password every time you start the computer. Then I lost the password. This was all a couple of months ago. I am now trying to fix it and get all my the use of my hard drive back. I know that I will never get my data back. So that's why I tried to wipe the drive. Twice. This was done using Darik's Boot and Nuke. It still wasn't working and then I remembered truecrypt saying something encrypted the volume headers so you couldn't see the volumes. So I deiced I might be able to fix the problem by cloning a my current OS drive. I so cloned my current drive onto the broken one to see if that would fix it. I did this twice. This was done by using a live cd version of Clonezilla. (uhh so so it appears the clonezilla website went down. at least for me). When I try to boot the newly copied hard drive after the BIOS it says something like "No Operating System Found"

    So I figure it has something to do with how windows (and Ubuntu if that matters, I tried to use the drive with a Ubuntu live cd but it didn't see it) recognizes the drive. because in My Computer -> Mange -> Disk management it says the hard drive is removable and has no media. I can't put anything on it because my computer doesn't know it has space to be able to.

    I've asked some people how to fix it and they say to format it. I can't. I would have done that if I could. I can't create a new volume either. I can't do a lot with it because windows doesn't even know its a hard drive.

    Bottom line: I messed my hard drive by encrypting the whole thing. I wiped and tried to clone another hard drive onto it. and I still can not use it. What do I do to be able to use my hard drive again?

    Thank you.

    P.S. I can upload pictures if you think that will help.

    P.P.S I fixed everything. I have no idea how. I just plugged it in and started it up. Both drives can not be plugged in because they're clones and that causes problems. So Im nuking the drive that was causing problems so I get a blank drive.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2014
  2. DesuMaiden

    DesuMaiden Registered Member

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    I'm not sure what we can do to help you.
     
  3. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    I understand you want to erase this disk totally and start over? Or are you all done..?

    Secure Erase would wipe everything more thoroughly than os based wipers. SE is part of the disk firmware and you activate it with a utility. http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/secure-erase.html
     
  4. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    USA still the best. But barely.
    Awesome 1 & done.
     
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