File Share Encryption

 View Only
  • 1.  PGP WDE and Norton Ghost with SSD Disaster

    Posted Jun 26, 2012 05:43 AM

    Hi All

     

    Now here is a catalogue of assumptions, rushing and out and out screw ups.

    Here is the situation:- I have a 500Gb HDD partitioned into 2 drives and encrypted with PGP WDE 10.0.2. I want to replace it with a 256Gb SSD (Samsung 830) and as there was only 150 Gb of data on the old drive I thought "what the hell" and went and used Norton Ghost Copy My Drive tool with the SSD connected via USB to sata adaptor.

    System Partition Copied Fine; C: Partition copied fine; D: Partition copied fine.  So far so good me thinks.

    I placed the SSD in my machine and PGP Bootloader loaded and accepted my password (WOOT me thinks). Then NTLDR misssing :(

    Damn I think. I knwo what I'll do I will decrypt both the dives remove PGP and then re do the Drive copy.

    HDD Decrypts fine.

    Re-attached the SSD and wait what is this "465.8Gb Removeable media"  shows up in PGP - How has my 256Gb SSD doubled in size? I figure that cloning PGP between different size drive wasn't my best idea.

    Oh what the Hell I think I'll just decrypt it and let PGP sort it out. So off it trots and decrypts the first 244Gb in about 8 Hrs and then it starts to slow. It is current standing at:- 47.55% Encrypted - 221.4GB of .8 GB remains encrypted 26 Days 17 Hrs 16 Mins remaning. 26 Days - I am pretty shure that I could rewrite each individual memory cell by hand in that ammount of time. I figure the problem is that PGP doesn't know the real size of the disk and is basically very confused.

    The status command line give me the folling info:


    C:\Program Files (x86)\PGP Corporation\PGP Desktop>pgpwde --status --disk 1
    Disk 1 is instrumented by bootguard.
    Encryption removal process is running in the background.
    Current key is valid.
    Whole disk encrypted
    Total sectors: 976769023 lowwatermark: 512432758 highwatermark: 976768961 reserved start sectors: 62
    Request sent to Disk status was successful

     

    What I want to know is - is there anyway to get round the encryption or to re-inalize the drive or even low level format it to remove any trace of PGP from it without having to wait the 26+ Days for the decryption to finish.

     

    Thanks

     

    Pete



  • 2.  RE: PGP WDE and Norton Ghost with SSD Disaster

    Posted Jun 26, 2012 07:26 AM

    Way back when PGP WDE was in beta and not working properly for me, I successfully reformatted the disk, restored a pre WDE image, and then used the WinXP Installation CD to rebuild the MBR.



  • 3.  RE: PGP WDE and Norton Ghost with SSD Disaster

    Posted Jun 26, 2012 09:00 AM

    Hi

    Unfortunately I haven't got an image I can restore from but I have tried to use DISKPART to do a CLEAN and then retried using norton Ghost to copy the now PGP system partition and MBR from HDD to the SSD. This worked, in the fact that it copied the System Partition and MBR but it would copy th OS (C:) partition.

    I re-opened PGP and it still sees the drive as 47.34% encrypted with 26 Days 15 Hours and 22 Minutes remaining.

    Thanks for the suggestion though.

     

    Pete