File Share Encryption

Hi,

This post concerns my laptop which is running Win 7 (64-bit) with one primary HDD with a single primary partition formatted with NTFS running PGP Desktop. I recently attempted to migrate to an SSD for performance reasons, that's when disaster struck.

I was using an Intel SSD so I used the official "Intel Data Migration Software" which underneath is really a customized version of Acronis TrueImage. I ran it from within Widnows 7 and followed all the steps to clone my existing PGP WDE HDD to the SSD (externally mounted). At some point it requested me to reboot the machine, the cloning process was supposed to continue in a pre-boot loader. After the reboot, my PC just hung at the very first screen that appears when you turn it on (the one where you get the option of interrupting the normal boot e.g., to enter BIOS settings). I waited for a few minutes but nothing happened, I got impatient and reboot the machine a couple of times but to no avail. By this time, my primary (internal) HDD had been rendered unbootable resulting in MBR 3 errors. After spending several hours with a whole range of disk diagnostics tools, I concluded that MBR is gone and so is the primary partition table. Partition recovery tools do not find any existing partition tables on the disk, I'm guessing this is because the partition table was also encrypted? The disk now appears as RAW unformatted disk in Windows, prompting me to format it every time I connect it.

I've attempted to recover using:

1) PGP Recovery disk 2) From within another computer running PGP Desktop

In all cases, the disk is not being recognized as encrypted.

Is there any hope to recover my data at all? I am now desparate - any tips/comments/sugggestions are appreciated!

Thanks!

Your first mistake was not decrypting the disk.  Any data migration is going to end in massive failure because...its encrypted.

did you run the /fixmbr command on your 1st hard drive?  Assuming the 1st drive has remained untouched (not sure what couldve happened to it as surly the migration tool should only read from this disk?) the Recovery DVD should work.

You need to make sure its the same recovery DVD for your version.  They are NOT inter-operable.

Hi Alex,

I made multiple mistakes -- including the one that you pointed out. :)

To asnwer your question: I tried to boot from Win 7 DVD and drop into recovery mode (that is what I assume is needed to run /fixmbr). However, since there is no partition table on the disk anymore, windows recovery does not recognize my Win 7 installation. Is there another way to fix MBR? And BTW, the disk has been untouched since the incident. I want to make sure that I've tried all possible ways to recover the data before I re-format it.

I think this particular tool has actually tried to modify the partition table and since it was encrypted, ended up destroying the disk. As I mentioned in my post, I used Intel Data Migration Software which underneath is Acronis TrueImage customized for migrating to SSDs. When the size of your source disk (HDD) is larger than your destination disk (SSD), true in my case, then the program automatically tries to figure out how to copy only the used space - and I believe it does so by modifying the size of the primary partition (I might be wrong).

I have tried using the exact same version of PGP for recovery as I was running on the laptop before it crashed. But as I said, it does not recognize the disk is encrypted. Again, because not only the MBR is gone but so is the partition table.

The logical next step was to use one of the partition recovery and rebuild tools. But none of the tools recognizes that there was a partition table on the disk. My question is that if I reformat the disk with the exact same partitioning as was on it before, and then try the PGP recovery, is there any hope?

I've also ran a data recovery tool on the disk, it does find 20-30 files after spending a whole night scanning the disk, none of the files I recognize. Wondering if any of those files might be useful in recovery.

Thanks.