Recovering data from password-protected volumes within an external hard drive

[Carlo Fabrizio]

Hi everyone. I have a Samsung 1TB external drive which got corrupted. Can't access it and am prompted to format it. However, most of the data is in some password-protected volumes I created within the drive (using the built-in Samsung Manager/ Secret Zone software). So I'm wondering if the data recovery programs online can help me recover the info in such password-protected volumes???

 

[popatim]

Nope.
You're only chance is to recover the partition which might allow you full access to the drive and from their you can decrypt the contents as you normally would.

I use testdisk for this, theres a step-by step guide about half way down the page. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

[Carlo Fabrizio]

Thank you for your prompt reply. I've tried two programs (easeUS & Kernel). Both took a long time to do the search and have identified between 500-700GB of data within the drive. However, I can't preview most of the data as both programs only show a wide range of file types and extensions. So I'm not sure whether or not to buy the full version to recover the data considering it was in the password-protected volumes within the drive. Is the data automatically encrypted when saved in a password-protected volume within a drive? If so, is it decrypted when recovered? Isn't the password necessary to recover the data from the protected volumes? Looking forward to your support.

 

[popatim]

The Secretzone software creates an encrypted virtual drive within the harddrive so the the drive sort of acts like both a normal drive and an encrypted drive. The encrypted drive would appear to be a big unreadable file to any recovery software. Much like a zip file but usually has a .msr extension.

While you might be able to recover the file(s) that has all the encrypted files in it there is no way recovery software could recover the individual files within it. But then all you need is the uncorrupted file - the Secretzone software could 'open' it from any drive once its recovered.

 

[Carlo Fabrizio]

What do you mean by the 'uncorrupted file'? How do I get it? What about moving (recovering) all the data (including the files containing the encrypted data) to another drive, format the corrupted one and moving the data back to the original drive so as to decrypt it? Could that work?

 

[Carlo Fabrizio]

I do know the password. The drive is inaccessible and so I can't access the volumes within it.

 

[popatim]

Yes, if recovery software is finding your files you can recover to another drive (never recover to the same drive) Once you have the files I would immediately make a backup copy to dvd or something. (a backup copy is an extra copy, never an only copy of your files) Before you restore files back to the 'problem' drive I would be testing the daylights out of it for issues. You can download diagnostic tools from the drive manufacturers website.

By uncorrupted I mean the file is not damaged. Just because you can recover it does not mean whats left on the 'problem drive' was a good or undamaged copy. Something as simple as changing a single 0 to a 1 (all data in harddrives is stored as zero's and one's) can completely destroy some files