Decrypt issue

[John Cristopher Umipig]

Hi,
I recently changed my harddrive from HDD to SSD. Unfortunately, I was not able to decrypt my HDD before replacing it. I am now using SSD and it is also encrypted. Is there a way to decrypt my HDD? Another unfortunate thing is, I lost my recovery disk on my HDD.

Thank you for your help.

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Hi,

It is possible to access the content of the encryped HDD even if you don't have the rescue disk, you just need the password and the PIM if you had set one.
Just plug it in another machine and mount it in VeraCrypt after checking the mount option "Mount partition using system encryption without pre-boot authentication" as shown in the screenshot below (the ReadOnly option is also checked in case you want to avoid any accidental change to the HDD content).

[John Cristopher Umipig]

Hi Mounir,

With your instruction I was able to mount the drive(See volume.png).
Now, when I try to decrypt it, i receive an error(see veracrypt.png).

I am using the laptop with encrypted SSD. I am using an enclosure on my HDD and connect it via usb.

Regarding PIM, I used a default when I encrypt it. So when I decrypt the HDD, I only enter my password.

Any steps I am missing?

Thank you,
John

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Hi,

Ok I understand better your question. So, you need to perform an In-Place decryption of the encrypted system driver.
Unfortunately, this is not yet implemented in Windows UI. Only the Rescue Disk implements this functionality.

Now that you can access the content of the HDD, you can locate and copy the Rescue Disk zip file (by default it is in the "Documents" folder of the user who peformed the system encryption). Then extract it in a USB key and boot on it.

Before booting on the Rescue Disk USB key, change the password for the SSD system encryption so that it is different from the one you use for the HDD system encryption (if it is already different, you can skip this step).

After booting, use the decryption menu of the Rescue Disk which will ask you for the password and there type the one of the HDD. After that, the decryption process should start.

Does this help you?

[John Cristopher Umipig]

Hi Mounir,
I recorded a video on what is happening. Unfortunately I cannot access my HDD. I can only mount it using your first instruction but unfortunately after that it won't let me in.

Please review the video and let me know.
Thank you,
John

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Hi John,

I think you attached the wrong video because it doesn't show much...it is only 10 seconds long and most of it is just showing the sourceforge webpage.

[John Cristopher Umipig]

re-recording. Not sure why it was cut off. Uploaded new video.

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Thank you, the second video shows things better.

So you are able to mount the HDD encrypted system partition but Windows can not access its content. This is an indication that there was filesystem corruption at some point. Probably, when the encrypted HDD was inserted into the new Windows, a quick format was performed which destroyed the filesystem table.

I see that the HDD encrypted system partition is associated to G: drive letter in Windows. What happens when you try to access G: in Windows Explorer? Do you have an error or does it let you in?

If my guess is correct, then the only way is to use a file recovery software on the mounted volume (F: in your video and not the encrypted partition G:) to try to salvage data. I don't any specific recommendation for such software. but there are many that are free. PhotRec is one of these and it is open source but it is a command line program without UI.