Weird issue. All of a sudden my correct password isnt working and I cannot access my data. I have not dropped/damanged/changed my drive either,,,

[Bob]

As stated before, you are always welcome to ask if you are in doubt.

Thank you for this! I spent the afternoon going down the rabbit hole of finding the original veraCrypt YT tutorial I used and I found it!

I am 90% confident, when installing, I went for:

"Encrypt a non-system partition/drive" > "Standard VeraCrypt Volume" > (I then selected the "Device\Harddisk\parition" option in the "Select a Partition or Device" option (when mounting the device, I would always choose the 8tb partition option from the same drop down list, to access my files). > "Create encrypted volume and format it" > Default encryption options.

I know you are being very kind with your time, and hence why I have held fire DMing you too to not harass you too much, but from the above I believe I should follow your steps mentioned in Stage 1, is that accurate?

So I should do:

1. In case, the entire device was encrypted (not a partition):
2. Format the device, quick mode, no partitioning (empty).
3. Try to mount the device in VC following the steps of https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/technical/thread/2ebaf9581c/?limit=25#1bfa/55a5/09d4/2ab2/c130 starting at "Then you could try again to mount the device[...]".

A genuine thank you again :)

[RealTehreal]

[...] but from the above I believe I should follow your steps mentioned in Stage 1, is that accurate?

From what you stated in your post, it is still not clear, if the entire device or a partition was encrypted as a VC volume. Therefore, I unfortunately cannot take the burden of decision off your shoulders. Sorry :-/

[Bob]

Ah no worries, I thought that would have given some insight into what option I needed to select because those were the only options I picked and was basically up and running after that.

Well I think I am going to go with option 1, I don't remember picking partitioning GPT or MBR and it seems like a more complicated process. I do remember formatting the whole drive to NTFS, because that was compatible with Mac and PC, but that doesnt tell me anything so might as well roll the dice at this stage!

I am not in College on Friday, so will hit you with an update then - wish me luck!

And a massive thank you again. I appreciate I have been a total pain!

[Bob]

Just thinking about this a bit more @RealTehreal , I think I would like to recover the data or take this as far as it can possibly go. More for just the learning and experimenting, I think it would make a fun little side project (as an aspiring compsci student).

So I really appreciate the help and hand-holding!

[Bob]

Hey there, sorry for the late reply on this. I got covid and only just got around to trying this today! Crazy!

So sadly, it didnt work. I firstly did the quick paritition with the settings you suggested and set to Read Only, but then when I mounted the drive I got the same error message as before.

So, I tried your next step of checking for a back up header, but I ended up getting the exact same message.

Oh well, it was fun learning. Does this mean I can just wipe the drive and use it as usual, I assume all other steps to recover the data are gone??

[RealTehreal]

I would suggest, the mentioned steps would work - at least it worked when I tested it by intentionally wiping some portions of an encrypted drive. But maybe in your case, too much data was overwritten, rendering it impossible to get anything back. It's always hard to tell from afar.