File Share Encryption

I have a PGP encrypted Samsung SSD drive, password in not known but there is no need to access the data on this drive. I just need to recover a blank drive, to use it in a new environment. 

Is there any program or technique to recover a PGP encrypted SSD to a blank drive?

Hi falky42,

As dcats said repartitioning should be enough to get rid of bootguard screen. But in case if we are still seeing bootguard, slave the SSD HD to a known good pc with pgp installed and run following pgpwde commands.

Mak sure we run this command if you are SURE that data is not needed.

pgpwde --fixmbr --disk 1 (disk 1 is mostly the slaved drive in this case make sure its SSD drive which we slaved).

Here is an article which explains how to run pgpwde commands.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH204285

Regards,

Sarfaraz Rahman

Just use dban's Boot and Nuke.  Very quick very simple.  Boots from USB and wipes the HDD.

http://www.dban.org/

I have to start by saying that Symantec does not endorse or approve any third party product for this purpose.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, if all you are after is basically resetting the drive without retaining any of the data, I would agree with Alex_CST.  I have used DBAN successfully on several systems.

Repartitioning also works the majority of the time, but there are those cases where it will repartition, and the Bootguard will stick around.  If you already have a linux live USB/CD sitting around, it is pretty quick to do.

In the end, I prefer finding a way that doesn't involve removing/slaving the drive if at all possible, so my preference would probably be DBAN for this type of situation.

Hi, thank you to all off you for your suggestions, but my problem seems to be different.

When I  attach the PGP encrypted SSD drive thru a USB adapter to a Windows 7 OS

it is shown as drive 2, but this drive is marked as offline. 

See attached screen shoot.

When I use the PGPWDE Command-line pgpwde --enum the drive is not listed.

With DBAN I have the same problem that the drive is not listed to work with.

If you right-click where it says Nicht initialisiert, you should be able to select 'Online'.  It should connect, and will probably tell you it is unformatted and ask to be formatted at that point.

Hi Mike, if I do a right-click I have only the 'Offline' to select, there is no 'Online' available.

And the option to initialize it is also greyed out...  Sometimes Windows doesn't do a good job of initializing disks that it doesn't recognize.  Have you tried initializing/formatting through Diskpart?

1. Open a command prompt, running it as administrator.
2. Type diskpart and press Enter.
3. Type list disk and press Enter.  Does the disk show up?
4. Type select disk X (X is the number the drive listed as) and press Enter.
5. Type clean and press Enter.  I have encountered a couple systems where I had to repeat this command 2-3 times for it to work.
6. Type create partition primary and press Enter.
7. Type format quick fs=ntfs and press Enter.  This will format the drive using NTFS file system.
8. Type assign and press Enter.  That should give it a drive letter assignment.  Does the drive show up in Windows Explorer?

Let me know those results, and we'll see what we can try next.

Hi Mike,

thank you for your suggestion. I still get the ERROR 'Disk not ready' at step 6.

I have attached the screen shoot.

How long did you wait after issuing the "clean" command? Maybe try a "clean all" from diskpart instead. This command takes longer, but goes through every sector and fills it with zeros.

Have you used the SSD manufacturers tool to check the health of the SSD. Did you check for any firmware updates on the SSD? Maybe those suggestions would help.

Oh, and BTW. If you are issuing these commands on a machine with Symantec Encryption Desktop (SED)  installed and the boot drive encrypted you may have problems with SED putting locks on the drive. I would try it on a machine with Symantec Encryption Desktop not installed, see if that helps.

Good luck!

Hi, still not working, the SSD drive is not accessible, every tool or program stops with an Write error.

DISKPART> clean all

ERROR Messages: The Device is write protected

Samsung's Magician cannot access the drive. See the screen shoot.

Is there any other program or tool to get rid of the PGP encryption?

I would suggest one of two approaches at this point, since it sounds like your drive has a permissions issue:

1. Boot with a Linux Live disk, and format it: Linux shouldn't care about Windows permissions
2. Right-click the drive, and select Properties.  See if you are able to go to the security tab.  Click "Advanced" near the bottom.  Select the "Owner" tab.  Click "Edit...".  Select your account, and check the box that says "Replace the owner on subcontainers and objects", then click "OK".  You may get a Windows Security warning that says something to the effect of "You do not have permissions to read the contents of......" followed by "All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes."  Press "Yes".  That should give you ownership of the drive, and allow formatting, etc.

I have not had an opportunity to test taking ownership of an encrypted drive this way to try a reformat, so I don't know if that will work for sure, but I have used it several times for other drives after a system change, and it works fine there.