Removing veracrypt encryption w/o veracypt

[gembob]

I encrypted an entire external HD with veracrypt, then uninstalled veracrypt from my pc (no idea why I did that) - anyway, now I'm unable to install veracrypt (any version). I've tried lots of the troubleshooting that's been posted online re: installing it, but at this point I'm just looking to remove the encryption all together and give up on VeraCrypt. My question is - can I format the drive and will that remove the encryption? There is no data on the drive so no concerns there. If formatting doesn't remove encryption, how can I possibly do that if I'm unable to install VeraCrypt (and I've tried on multiple computers - all running windows).

 

[hang-the-9]

Deleting the partition will wipe any encryption off it along with the data. Run diskpart, do a "list disk" command to find out what disk the external drive is, do a "select disk x" where x is the number of that external drive, then do a "clean disk" command. That will wipe the drive clean. Then go into disk manager and create a new partition on that drive.

 

[gembob]

Okay - does it make any difference if I didn't create a partition in the first place, just encrypted the whole drive? That may be a stupid question, just not sure?

 

[hang-the-9]

Okay - does it make any difference if I didn't create a partition in the first place, just encrypted the whole drive? That may be a stupid question, just not sure?

Should not matter. Just try it, you can't do any damage to the thing to make things worse.

 

[gembob]

Okay - does it make any difference if I didn't create a partition in the first place, just encrypted the whole drive? That may be a stupid question, just not sure?

Should not matter. Just try it, you can't do any damage to the thing to make things worse.

Ok I'll try that tonight