My name is Chris and I've been casually using Veracrypt for several years. The version I think I have always had is 1.25.9.
Recently I was helping a friend upgrade his computer and, very unfortunately, while backing up and transferring around partitions and disks for him, I accidently copied over the Veracrypt volume I had on one of the destination drives. I've never lost data before in many decades of cloning hard drives (simple computer repairs and reinstalls for Windows machines), but I was using some new cloning I was unfamiliar with, so it seems there is a first time for everything. Fortunately, I also cloned drives several times per year as backups, and had 2 clones of the drive I just obliterating. I thought things would be fine.
I will call them Backups A and B. To cut to the chase, nothing is found on Backup B. I am guessing maybe I didn't do a sector-by-sector copy, so I've just been focusing on cloned backup drive A, which is the more recent backup anyway.
I put in Backup A and it accepts the password. Yay! The volume appears to be there, 350 GB, but it is labeled as "hidden", which is odd as I think I stopped trying to use hidden volumes a long time ago, AES encryption (I think that is correct), and even though it shows up on my Win 10 machine under the drive letter I want, I cannot open it. Windows wants to format it. The fear sets in...
So I have now cloned Backup A so I can work on it more freely. I can mount the volume. It looks like it will work, but the file system is RAW and Windows wants to format it. I can restore the header from within the volume and it has me twerk the mouse around when putting in a new password (I use the same password). No help. The volume cannot be decrypted (Error: "VeraCrypt can in-place encrypt only a partition, dynamic volume, or an entire drive"), and the Repair Filesystem command fails (Error: "CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives")
I go to Disk Management, delete the drive letter Windows wants to assign to it, normally D or E, then I run recovery software either on the entire backup drive, which is 2 GB, or just the 350 GB "hidden" Veracrypt volume that supposedly has been successfully mounted. I have tried: EaseUS, Partition Recovery, Testdisk, and Photorec. No useful results; just a few claimed files that are misidentifications and huge in size.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Big thanks in advance!
Last edit: Chris 2024-11-11
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Hi there,
My name is Chris and I've been casually using Veracrypt for several years. The version I think I have always had is 1.25.9.
Recently I was helping a friend upgrade his computer and, very unfortunately, while backing up and transferring around partitions and disks for him, I accidently copied over the Veracrypt volume I had on one of the destination drives. I've never lost data before in many decades of cloning hard drives (simple computer repairs and reinstalls for Windows machines), but I was using some new cloning I was unfamiliar with, so it seems there is a first time for everything. Fortunately, I also cloned drives several times per year as backups, and had 2 clones of the drive I just obliterating. I thought things would be fine.
I will call them Backups A and B. To cut to the chase, nothing is found on Backup B. I am guessing maybe I didn't do a sector-by-sector copy, so I've just been focusing on cloned backup drive A, which is the more recent backup anyway.
I put in Backup A and it accepts the password. Yay! The volume appears to be there, 350 GB, but it is labeled as "hidden", which is odd as I think I stopped trying to use hidden volumes a long time ago, AES encryption (I think that is correct), and even though it shows up on my Win 10 machine under the drive letter I want, I cannot open it. Windows wants to format it. The fear sets in...
So I have now cloned Backup A so I can work on it more freely. I can mount the volume. It looks like it will work, but the file system is RAW and Windows wants to format it. I can restore the header from within the volume and it has me twerk the mouse around when putting in a new password (I use the same password). No help. The volume cannot be decrypted (Error: "VeraCrypt can in-place encrypt only a partition, dynamic volume, or an entire drive"), and the Repair Filesystem command fails (Error: "CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives")
I go to Disk Management, delete the drive letter Windows wants to assign to it, normally D or E, then I run recovery software either on the entire backup drive, which is 2 GB, or just the 350 GB "hidden" Veracrypt volume that supposedly has been successfully mounted. I have tried: EaseUS, Partition Recovery, Testdisk, and Photorec. No useful results; just a few claimed files that are misidentifications and huge in size.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Big thanks in advance!
Last edit: Chris 2024-11-11