TrueCrypt Won't Recognize my non-system Drive anymore! Help?

Basically, i have a 2TB hd encrypted as a whole disk encryption (so the entire hd is encrypted, no seperate virtual volume files or anything)... and when i go to the "Select Device" button on the main TrueCrypt dialog (you can't miss it) the 2TB volume is not there at all!!!

i've tried this (accessing it) on another computer, nothing! i've purchased a sata case so i can run my 2TB HD as an external drive and try accessing it this way in case it made a difference, but it doesn't!

When i installed the external hd case, everything went fine, and in Computer Management it recognized a drive that needs to be initialized (which i presume would be the 2TB drive) so from this i deduce that windows does recognize the device but can't make sense of it since it's encrypted. of course, it doesn't show up with a drive letter or anything if you go to your "My Computer" link... so im assuming TrueCrypt is a piece of **** and ain't recognizing this. Since it is not a system-boot partition, i didn't try the rescue disk since its probably not related to this volume.

any ideas guys? i've got 600 GBs of space, astronomy, universe related documentaries (largest collection in the world) collected over years, that i was about to publish on a good torrent site to share with everyone, and then this happened!!! i beg for your advice and guidance....

 

The Truecrypt Forum is loaded with answers to these kinds of questions. Sorry about your loss, I hope you find a solution to this problem.

http://forums.truecrypt.org/

Some Advice for the future

• Always have a Backup plan for your important data, especially if you have collected it for years.
• TrueCrypt Containers are safer to use than WDE on a storage drive.

 

hello, thanks for your reply, but i have tried posting to truecrypt forums, and it has received no response as yet. here is the link if you like...

http://forums.truecrypt.org/viewtopic.php?t=21787

so my question still stands for anyone willing to help out.

 

bmracerx,

I can't help with the TrueCrypt issue.

You asked about "initialize". I've no idea what it does to an encrypted HD but with a standard HD it means a Disk Signature and Boot Code is written to the HD. Windows only offers to initialize if it sees an empty LBA-0.

 

@Brian, thanks for your information, when these steps you described occur, does it damage any existing data on the Hard Drive (as in, the contents of the hard drive)?

 

I also have an external 2TB drive that does not do the usual "do you want to initialize" message as other drives I have do. It is also not assigned a drive letter by Windows and thus not visible as a selectable drive to mount by TrueCrypt. But when I use the TrueCrypt "Auto-Mount Devices" button it mounts the drive just fine. I just thought this was a function of the different versions of TrueCrypt I had used to format the drives, the 2TB being the last in awhile. I was happy with this new condition, as I never liked that "initialize" message, it seemed like it would be too easy for the wrong button to be pushed and make the drive useless.

 

@focus, do you see the drives when you click on "Select Device..."? if so, then thats good, because when i click on that, i only see my system volume and my 1TB drive, but not my 2TB drive

 

I just checked this and "Select Device" does show the 2TB drive, but just as "Harddisk 2" with no letter assigned and no partitions. I then connected a 1TB drive (formatted under a prior version of TrueCrypt) and it shows as Harddisk 2 with a partition letter N. I am not sure what is going on, if this is a function of the new version of TrueCrypt or some bug with the "Select Device" and 2TB drives, but I am going to continue to use "Auto-Mount" with the 2TB for fear of having the same experience that you are having. I am using a ThermalLake BlacX docking station with these drives.

 

When it all worked properly would you select a specific partition (such as "\Device\Harddisk2\Partition1") in the Select Device window, and then mount that? If so then you had an encrypted partition, not a fully-encrypted drive. A fully-encrypted drive would show up as "HardDisk 2:" and would not have any partitions listed under it. People always mix those two up.

Apparently your partition table has been damaged or overwritten and now neither TC nor Disk Manager can find the partition. Since the partition was fully encrypted, it was basically unrecognizable. Usually this isn't a problem, but under certain conditions some software (like Windows) likes to "fix" things, sometimes without warning. Did you ever plug the drive into a computer that offered to format it, and did you click Yes by mistake? Or did you ever perform a Windows upgrade while the drive was still attached? Or install or run partitioning software while the drive was still attached? And so on. Any partition-aware software can cause this problem.

The solution is to recreate the partition table. There are several approaches, based on how you created the original partition. Was it a single maximally-sized partition that filled the drive?

 

Sorry, I got mixed up and replied to the wrong post.

bmracerx, your description is unclear. Is the drive currently recognized by Windows Disk Management or not? Even an uninitialized (or a fully encrypted) drive will show up as a raw drive. It it doesn't then you've got hardware problems.

If Disk Management sees the drive then TrueCrypt's "Select Device" will show it. It doesn't matter if Windows assigned a drive letter or not.