VeraCrypt cannot find partition

[Jade Sambrook]

I had my main C Drive (drive/partition) encrypted using VeraCrypt.

My PC froze except for the mouse cursor, so I manually restarted the computer.

The VeraCrypt bootloader would not longer appear, so I used the rescue disk to repair key data and bootloader.

I was then able to get past the VeraCrypt bootloader with the right password. However instead of loading Windows I get some message about BootMgr not being available and about hardware/software being changed and about hardware not being available.

I therefore followed VeraCrypt reccomendation to fully decrypt the drive so that I could then try and use a Windows repair tool to fix the drive. The problem is that the decryption process is extremely slow! Like it will take a month to decrypt the drive!

So I installed windows 10 on another empty hard drive I had so that I could atleast have a computer. I then try to mount the faulty drive but VeraCrypt says that no partitions can be found.

To be clear, the partition is there in disk manager, but is asking me to initialize it, and of course I dont want to do that so that I dont lose all the data on it.

But if I dont initialize it then VeraCrypt cant mount it.

To be clear, when I select the drive to mount in Veracrypt the drive is there (partition 0, 471GB) - but after putting in the password is says partition not found.

So what do I do? Any solutions? Anything Im missing?

I would really like to try and access this drive so that I can atleast try and get data off of it.

Please help! :)

Thanks! :)

[Jade Sambrook]

Update: So I disconnected the hard drive that has my new windows installation, and I now only have the old windows encrypted hard drive connected. Im able to boot the rescue disk, but whenever I select option 1 (Permanently decrypt) I keep getting a "Verifying password...Drive 0 not Found: Error: 1 Incorrect password." And whenever I select option 2 (restore VeraCrypt Boot Loader) it says "Drive 0 not found: Error: 1. And whenever I select option 3 (Restore key data) I keep getting the same message as above: "Drive 0 not found: Error: 1". Then it will eventually say "Modify drive 0? (y/n):" I press y and it says "Drive 0 not found: Error: 1.

I simply do not understand, since when I connect the drive in my new windows installation I can see it in the disk management as needding to be initialized. I also tried connecting it with an external casing through USB, and same thing, it is shown in disk manager as needing to be initialized.

Can I initialize it without losing the data on it?

Im really looking forward to knowing what steps to take to fix this issue so that I can retrieve important data on the disk. Is there anything I could tell a data recovery company to help get the VeraCrypt software to decrypt this disk?

Thank you in advance for your reply :)

[Enigma2Illusion]

Can I initialize it without losing the data on it?

No. This will cause Windows to overwrite your header.

Sorry, I do not have any suggestions for you. It is curious that you were able to start the decryption the first time before connecting the drive to the Win10 computer. How did you abort the decryption via the VeraCrypt Rescue Disk?

I am wondering if the aborting of the decryption or connecting the drive to Win10 now has now resulted in the "Drive 0 not Found" error.