Used ddrescue to create .img file of a failing drive. Cannot extract encrypted .ntfs partition (Win7).

Status
Not open for further replies.

GeneralDrillhamster

Commendable
Sep 9, 2016
5
0
1,510
A few weeks ago I had a hard drive which was very slow to read any files (upwards of 10 minutes just to open a folder) and started giving errors if I tried to copy anything over, or would copy files at about 200kb/s. Through my research I found a great little tool called ddrescue and was able to (after a grueling 14 days) create an img file of my entire drive (2Tb) onto a new and larger drive (4Tb).

The original drive had 2 partitions. My normal everyday use partition, and an encrypted partition which was made with Veracrypt. When I open the .img file with 7zip, I see 2 partitions and both are the correct sizes. 0.ntfs (regular partition) and 1.ntfs (encrypted partition). I can very easily open 0.ntfs and have already backed up files from there to this new drive. Now, I want to access this encrypted partition and pull off my most important files so I can delete this .img file and save a lot of space and start fresh.

But there's a problem. Obviously, double clicking and trying to access 1.ntfs directly does not work, and if I try to move the .ntfs file out of the .img file, I get this error: "The object invoked has disconnected from its clients".

So, I'm lost. How can I, at this point, use Veracrypt to mount this .ntfs partition? I can't seem to find a way to make it look in the .img file, unless I'm missing something.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated! Thanks!

-Windows 7 x64
 
Solution


Hey there, yeah in my original post I mentioned that I used ddrescue and did create an img of the entire drive. That's where the problem is. When I open the .img file, I see two partitions. 0.ntfs and 1.ntfs. The first partition is all of the unencrypted data. The 2nd partition is the veracrypt partition which is encrypted. I do not know how to "mount" this 1.ntfs in veracrypt (or anywhere, for that matter) to let veracrypt see that it is an encrypted partition. I think the problem is that Veracrypt cannot see inside of the .img file, so I'd like to be able to move this partition elsewhere so maybe Veracrypt can see it, but I can't move it out of the img, because I get this error: "The object invoked has disconnected from its clients".

Thanks
 
It's been about two weeks with no replies nor solvable solution so I'd like to try getting this noticed again. It's been buried for a little while. I cant' say that I've been able to try anything new because I'm still in the same situation as stated previously.
 




Don't open the image file directly, you need to dump that image onto another drive, boot from that and then use the tool to get to the encrypted part. Encryption does not like disk errors at all, your data may be gone from that partition.
 


No, you don't open the .img file.
You reconstitute that .img to an actual, physical drive.
Then maybe you can see what is in that VeraCrypt and what is in it.
 
Solution
Oh! I see now. Thank you so much. I don't have another drive to reconstitute to an actual drive (I'm not even sure how to do that, but I'll Googlefu that later. I suppose my first step is getting a new hard drive and testing it out. Should I make sure it was the same size as the HD I copied? Does it matter?
 


Hello :)

Hope you can help me, how did you open the 0.ntfs file? i cant open mine after i extract the img file i get 2 .ntfs files cant open them ?? :)
 


Please start your own thread on this issue.
This thread is ancient, and unlikely any of the original participants will see this. (except me)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.