Lost truecrypt partition

Discussion in 'encryption problems' started by raygun99, Jan 13, 2014.

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  1. raygun99

    raygun99 Registered Member

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    Hello everyone,

    I created a 40gb encrypted partition a few months ago which has now disappeared. One time I went to select it in true crypt from this list http://imgur.com/jJ4hp1R

    but it wasn't there. When I rebooted my computer it appeared again. It kept appearing and disappearing somewhat randomly for a while, but now it never appears. I had named it the X:\ drive and successfully stored files in it before so I know it worked.

    I don't know why it has disappeared. I've been reading about it but I'm not sure how to diagnose the cause of the issue.

    I ran testdisk and got this info about a partition that can't be recovered http://imgur.com/uxHDCen

    I think that this may be my missing partition but I'm not sure what to do about it. If someone could help me with the steps to take to get my data back I'd be very thankful.

    Other info: the other testdisk screen http://imgur.com/4mYOVdX

    and information about my computer and OS http://imgur.com/wn7KaL0

    Thanks in advance for any help.
     
  2. dantz

    dantz Registered Member

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    Is the disk itself visible in Disk Management?
     
  3. raygun99

    raygun99 Registered Member

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    It doesn't appear to be http://imgur.com/qSz1bmT

    Other info that may help:

    Sometimes I would mount normal truecrypt files to the X:\ drive letter. Could this overwrite my partition location/header etc?

    I use magicdisk to mount virtual drives. Again, it's possible these could have been mounted as X:\.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2014
  4. dantz

    dantz Registered Member

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    TrueCrypt volumes can only be mounted to free drive letters, so if Drive X was connected then TC would not allow you to use that letter, so no, I don't think that sort of thing would have happened. (Unless your system is very screwed up.) Not familiar with magicdisk, though.

    But please clarify, as I'm not quite sure what you're describing: Has an entire disk gone "missing", or is the disk there, but it's merely missing a partition?
     
  5. raygun99

    raygun99 Registered Member

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    I have 1 physical hard disk (Disk 0) that has been split into 3 partitions: C, D, and X (looking again I see there may be a 4th partition of 10gb, mentioned below). C and D were there when I bought the computer, I created X myself. X seems to have disappeared.

    C and D, shown in disk management (http://imgur.com/qSz1bmT), are two partitions of the same physical disk. X was also created as a partition of this disk, or could have been a partition of either C or D (is that possible?).

    Can you tell what the unlabelled disk that is 10gb in size shown at the top of disk management is (described as Healthy EISA Configuration, with diagonal hatch markings on it)? I always assumed that was the system partition, but it says that the system and boot etc is located on C. I suppose that it is possible that this is my encrypted partition, and that I created it at 10gb size rather than the 40gb that I remember. Do you know how I can find out?

    Thanks for your help with this.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 16, 2014
  6. dantz

    dantz Registered Member

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    You can always try to mount the partition, just to see if it works. It can't hurt. The simplest way would be to open TrueCrypt, click on "Auto Mount Devices" and provide your password, in which case TrueCrypt will automatically test your password against every partition that it can find on the disk (and any other attached drives) to see if any of them are encrypted partitions or disks that can be mounted with that password.
     
  7. raygun99

    raygun99 Registered Member

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    I've tried auto mount and tried selecting that partition individually and it doesn't work. I'm certain that I have the right password.

    Going back to the check disk screencap (http://imgur.com/uxHDCen) if the size in sectors is in kb then that's almost exactly 40gb, which points fairly strongly to that being the truecrypt partition. It says that it can't be recovered, do you think that check disk can't read it because it is encrypted, or that it is irrecoverable even if truecrypt could find it? How do I make truecrypt point to that partition if it isn't showing up on this screen (http://imgur.com/jJ4hp1R)?
     
  8. dantz

    dantz Registered Member

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    Sorry, I lost track of your thread. I've been busy helping several other TrueCrypt users who are having similar (but not identical) problems. I suggest you look at the TC threads that I've been posting in (in the Privacy Technology forum) to see what we've been doing. Basically, we use a hex editor to try to find the beginning of the lost partition, then select the whole thing and copy it onto another disk as a file. This can sometimes be successful.
     
  9. raygun99

    raygun99 Registered Member

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