Linux

55679 readers

632 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Accidentally wrote an ISO to an encrypted 5TB drive… Help? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So, I did a thing - accidentally selected my 5TB external NTFS hard drive (encrypted with VeraCrypt) as the target for writing an ISO. The moment I noticed that "Impression" had switched the drive letter, I immediately killed the process. But yeah… damage done.

Now, the situation:

Currently shows up as:
- 6 MB FAT
- 4.3 GB
- 2 TB unallocated
- 2.6TB unallocated
The VeraCrypt volume obviously no longer mounts.
Drive was somewhat crucial - lots of structured data I’d really prefer to recover with the original file system intact.

I know chances are slim, especially with encrypted volumes, but has anyone had luck recovering from something like this? I’m open to commercial recovery tools or command-line wizardry. Would love to hear from anyone who’s been down this road.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 14 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

If you have your encryption key backed up, you have a chance to decrypt it still. It's also possible, but unlikely, the key somehow survived the ISO write and it was written elsewhere on the drive, allowing the key to be recovered. I would only trust such with a professional. (There is basically a smaller encrypted section that your typed-in password decrypts, that section contains the encryption key the rest of the drive uses.)

Honestly though, if you have your stuff backed up (you do have your stuff backed up elsewhere?!?), just restore from your backup and call this a loss.

If you don't have a backup, this was your wakeup call. Always have a backup going forward.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Aren’t encryption keys, typically in the partition header? Wouldn’t that be one of the first things overwritten? Even if it was in the FAT or in the GUID, it would have been overwritten when a the ISO was written.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, it's very unlikely it survived.