Re: [dm-crypt] Fwd: Recover a LUKS partition

[orinoco <orinoco@cybernetica.de>]

Hi fred,

On Thu, 27 May 2010 13:46:03 +0100
fred smith <dopey483@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am desperate to try to recover this disk - it has important stuff on
> it. Any suggestions or pointers?
> I know the passphrase, but is there any way of recover the first part
> of the partition? I have attached the drive via an external interface
> and 'gparted' shows:
> /dev/sdb1  fat32  200MiB      first sector 40          last sector
> 409689 /dev/sdb2  hfs+   931.19GiB  first sector 409640
> Anything I can do or try?

I have a LUKS encrypted hard disk with destroy 1st part
(accidently overwritten with encrypted cache)
myself.
From what I learned on this list about LUKS there is no way to recover
it because there is no backup of it at the end or anywhere else in the
partition. The key passphrase is AFAIK no help because it is only used
to encrypt the real key used for encryption of the partition itself.
So the only way to recover it would be to "guess" this key, but this is
as safe as strong encrpytion can be.

So, at this point I would consider your data as lost, 
but hope dies last. You could keep the disk and maybe future generations
can recover the data.

regards

orinoco

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: fred smith <dopey483@gmail.com>
> Date: 24 May 2010 16:45
> Subject: Recover a LUKS partition
> To: dm-crypt@saout.de
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I rebooted my server for the first time in ages, and now I can not
> mount a LUKS partition :-(
> 
> The 'cryptsetup isLuks /dev/sdc1' returns that the partition is not
> encrypted, so it is not recognising /dev/sdc2 as a LUKS partition.
> Nothing has changed except a reboot and the standard Centos updates.
> 
> While I wait for 'testdisk' to finish (the drive is 1TB):
> _______________________________________________