Re: Format An Encrypted Drive ?

"345" <345@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:449f4829$0$6628$5a62ac22@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Arno Wagner <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Previously 345 <345@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Arno Wagner <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Previously MeNTaL CaT <no@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Its a normal hdd in an external shell, i was surprised that file
scavenger recognised it, nothing else i have tried will even
acknowledge the drive exists. The encryption sits in its own volume
on the hdd, the encryption is 256 bit. How tricky is it to remove
the housing on the ext hdd and placing in my pc case ?,

No idea.

and wil this make
it easier to access ? Thanks for your help, MC. :)

If the protection really does not let you format, then
it is ion the hardware of tha case. There are very few
disks on the market that can do encryption themselves and
they are expensive,

That is just plain wrong. Most of the laptop
drives will do the ATA standard protection.
Some of the 3.5" drives too.

Yes, they will do the password feature. But no, the data will not
be encrypted on disk. The drive does just not let you access it,
but data-recovery outfits should find it easy to access. If the
data us encrypted, data-recovery companies cannot access it.

Its less than clear that his drive is actually encrypted since
he could get the data back with file scavenger.

He didn't say that the contents was useful tho.
And if the drive was password protected file scavenger
certainly would not be able to get to the contents either.

It much more likely to be just another access restriction
approach instead.

And what he said about the drive not being seen by anything
taken with quite a grain of salt. Probably just a simple
partition table manipulation scheme.


so it is unlikely that you have one of them.

So removing the disk from the case should allow you to
remove the partitions. If it does not, then an ATA
passwiord may be used. In that case thereis no encryption,
but also no way around hving the password.

That last is just plain wrong too. Not that hard
to format the drive if its that level of protection.

Are you sure?

Yep.

AFAIK you cannot format the drive if the
highest level of ATA protection is set.

Nor with the lowest.


You dont necessarily have to use the highest level tho.

You haven't got a clue what is used -if any at all-, Roddy.


If you dont, you can override the password protection,
and have the drive wipe itself when you do.

But not without *a* password, Roddy.


And there are commercial services that will bypass even the highest
level of ATA protection too, you just have to send them the drive.
.

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