Marcin Kucharczyk - 2023-06-16

Hi,

Yesterday I observed strange behaviur of VeraCrypt, but maybe it is normal and intended? Can anybody explain it?

A few words about my configuration: I have two M.2 NVMe drives. The first one is my system disk encrypted with VeraCrypt 1.25.9. The second one is unencrypted system disk installed to have possibilty to run computer in case of problems with the main disk.

Yesterday I tried to run the second system (to install updates) and I noticed that this "spare drive" was dead. But before i figured it out I noticed a strange (to me) problem with VeraCrypt. I will describe what I did step by step and maybe someone will be able to interpret the described behavior:

I restarted computer. Then I entered BIOS settings and changed boot order: the "spare drive" was set as the first and the main drive (encypted) as the second. When I restarted I saw unexpectedly VeraCrypt request to enter the password. I entered my password few times but VeraCrypt said that it is incorrect... For a few moments I was in a state of pre-infarction, but after a few minutes I started again. I restored boot order in BIOS to provious state. Then after restart I entred my password again and the system started successfully. Then I found that the "spare drive" is dead :/

In summary, in short:

  • two disk: 1 - system disk, encrypted, 2 - not bootable
  • standard boot order: 1 than 2 - password is accepted, system disk is "unencrypted" properly and works
  • modified boot order: 2 than 1 - second disk is not bootable, BIOS tries to boot from the next disk in order, VeraCrypt booloader requests to enter password, the password is not accepted

Is the above behavior normal?

Regards,
Marcin