File Share Encryption

Never thought it would happen but it did. Please advise on the following:

I have 3 drives, all encrypted with PGP whole disk encryption. I changed the passphrase earlier today and, yes, I forgot it. Have an idea but there is just to many combinations. All the drives are currently accessible as the laptop is running.

The only solution I can think of is to copy the contents of all three drives to a portable drive I have (which is big enough) and then to format the three pgp drives after which all the data can be moved back and encrypted again. A process which will take at least 2 to 3 days.

Is there perhaps a shorter way? Is there a way to recover the passphrase while the drives are unencrypted or accessible?

Any advice will be highly appreciated.

If you can not remember the passphrase and there are no Local recovery questions associated with this drive. . Best option is to backup all the data to another device and then reinstall the OS and recover the data from backup. For future reference it is a good idea to setup another user on the drive or set the local recovery questions. There is no way to view the passphrase or change it without knowing the passphrase

Thanks for the tip on the second user. Counting myself lucky, I almost did a shutdown which would have meant that I would have been unable to startup again. At least now I can copy all the information over to my external drive.....lesson learned....will be far more carefull when going on a password change rampage.