Windows: "You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it."
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Hello, I have a external hard drive.
I have encrypted my external hard drive using VeraCrypt on Ubuntu.
Currently I am on Windows, I do not have access to any Ubuntu systems.
I know the password, and I verified that I've used the correct password to decrypt the drive.
I do not get any errors or problems when mounting by using VeraCrypt on Windows, but when I try to open the disk after I mount it. I get the following error, which asks me whether I want to format the disk or not.
"You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it."
I have also tried Bitwar Data Recovery Tool, and it seems like Bitwar is able to find my files in the disk. I don't think the disk is corrupted at all.
How can I fix this? I've tried to do "Change Drive Letter and Paths" in Disk Management, but I don't have the mounted disk on there, however; I have the original hard drive itself as a device there. marked as "Disk 1" and "Unknown", "Not initialized".
Also, when I open up Disk Management, I get a message telling me "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it."
It gives me a selection box, where I have only 1 option and it is "Disk 1" (pretty sure it is my decrypted/mounted disk)
And I have 2 radios below that, MBR and GPT (GPT is selected by default)
What should I do? How can I access my data? I would like to continue using VeraCrypt and I'm even thinking of completely encrypting my OS.
Hope someone can give me a help hand... Thanks from now.
I assume that you used ext* as the volume's filesystem, which is not supported by Windows. I don't know if there is Windows software available to access such filesystems. Your best bet would then be to use an OS capable of handling such filesystems. You could use any Linux live system (via USB key, CD, DVD, whatever) with VeraCrypt support, to access your data. By using a live system, you don't even need to install Linux anywhere. Only thing you need is a live image (can be downloaded) and a medium to boot it from. If you use a USB key, you should use your preferred search engine to find out, how to properly put it onto the USB key.
Greets