i copied a bunch of files from one hard drive to another, reformatted the first drive and reinstalled windows. A long time ago, i turned on the windows encryption for some dumb ass reason. Well, i took off the encryption for some of the files but not all.

So now i have a bunch of photos of friends and random internet pictures that I can't view. Since I reformatted the drive, the certificate or whatever (not sure of the proper terminology) is gone. So, it seems like none of the major recovery tools will work.

Is there anyway to recover the files? or are they just lost? It's really just the pictures that i'm interested in recovering.

8/31/2008 3:53:43 PM

are you talking about bitlocker?

if so, no - unless you kept the recovery disk it asked you to make when you turned it on.

otherwise, encryption would be pointless.

8/31/2008 5:23:43 PM

Quote :

"otherwise, encryption would be pointless."

exactly.. if they weren't worthy of encrypting, why did you ever do it? it's not just something you can magically turn on and off when you feel like it

i doubt you'll ever get them back.

8/31/2008 5:28:19 PM

i don't think it's bitlocker. It's the windows EFS stuff. i just right-clicked the folder>properties>advanced> and checked encrypt contents

Like I said, i turned it on a long time ago, and then was saving files to a subfolder in that particular folder and just never turned it off.

When i copied the files over, i did turn it off... but i must not have done so on all of the folders.

Quote :

"it's not just something you can magically turn on and off when you feel like it"

well, you're right about the magic part. it was just a few clicks to turn on or off whenever i felt like it. Not trying to be a dick, but what you said isn't really correct.

8/31/2008 5:45:42 PM

it sure as hell isn't anymore now is it?

yea, that was my point.

8/31/2008 5:48:40 PM

haha, nah it's not.

8/31/2008 5:53:49 PM

Can you log in as the local Administrator and unlock them? (I have no clue about this feature - I've just dealt with user permission stuff this way)

9/1/2008 12:17:27 PM

no, i could have used something like Advanced EFS Data Recovery if it were just a matter if being a different user. It searches for the certificates which are used to decrypt the files. But since the drive has been formatted, those certificates no longer exists.

thanks though.

9/1/2008 2:50:46 PM