Help! recover encrypted files

[cyoung]

I had a bunch of files on an NTFS formatted external firewire drive, that were encrypted. My main system crashed, and now I cannot access these files. I have tried making the administrator account take ownership, but I still cannot access them.

The computer name stayed the same, and my login name and password are the same.

Is there anyway to revcover these files?

Thanks!

 

[linney]

Have you got an image backup of the System that crashed that you can reload?

Even though you re-installed with the same name and passwords your SID's will be different.

post crash re-installation
thread779-915672

Advanced EFS Data Recovery

http://www.elcomsoft.com

How to De-crypt Encrypted files on a Stand Alone machine
thread779-390584

EFS Data Recovery Agent - How do I do this?
thread779-974529

An encrypted file or folder is decrypted if you CAN? copy it to a volume that is not an NTFS file system volume (ie. CD or Floppy disks). If some third party software like

http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/#

was able to convert your file system to FAT32 that might work but I have never tried that, and doubt it would be successful, but stranger things happen?

 

[cyoung]

Thanks for the links, but it appears that I am completly out of luck, since I had to not only reinstall, but I had to re-format the HDD.

I have tried the Advanced EFS data recovery software, and it was not able to recover anything. I even tried moving the data to a FAT-32 drive, but XP would not let me move or copy the encrypted data.

I really wish that I had read the info on EFS better, I really thought that by placing it on an external drive I would be safe from re-installs and be able to move it around easier.

Now, I need to figure out how to make an image of this data so that I can archive it to a DVD incase I ever figure out how to un-encrypt.

Thanks for your help on this!

 

[linney]

The trouble is it wouldn't be encryption if it was easy to decipher by anyone, I don't know what else to advise in this matter.

I don't even think that other operating systems, like Linux, will be able to read those files, I hope I'm wrong.