Is it possible to recover a failed SSD which is encrypted using Cryptsetup?

Stellaris

Stellaris

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I bought a Thinkpad t450 few months ago and it came with an Intel 256GB SSD.
Then I wiped windows and installed Endevour OS on it and encrypted it using Cryptsetup.
But I forgot to check hard drive health when I bought the laptop and unfortunately it failed to boot after using a week.
My entire password database was in that hard drive. I forgot to backup it on another device.
It's a long story, I am not going to bore you telling about it.

So, my question is, is it possible to recover a failed SSD which is encrypted?

I called several hard drive recovery companies and it costs a lot, but I am willing to pay that amount. I remember the password, but I don't know if it makes impossible to recover a SSD when it is encrypted. This is the very first time I faced a problem in this area.
Any help, advice is very much appreciated.
 


I cannot help you with your question.....but, just for clarity.....the password you remember is for cryptsetup ?

I can only say that the recovery companies you spoke to should answer the question./....whether a ssd can be recovered when it is encrypted
 
Stellaris said:
I thought to keep the SSD alone for a professional before doing anything else to mess it up anymore.
Click to expand...

That's the correct course of action. It's gonna be expensive, especially as the drive is dead. I guess it's slightly less expensive now, as they don't need the exact same drive with the exact same firmware before they manually move the platters over. So, it's less expensive with an SSD - or so I'm told.

I've dealt with this once before. It's a long story, but I lost a ton of data including my backups. In short, there was a bizarre storm with lightning directly hitting the house multiple times (messing my roof right up). Back then, everything was magnetic storage (or optical storage). For some unknown reason, every disk in the house was blanked. I had to pay out of pocket and the insurance company reimbursed me whatever they saw fit (I forget how much).

Encrypted files can be recovered, as far as I know. They just can't be opened unless they can decrypt them.

Finally, the plural of 'software' is 'software'. The word 'softwares' is incorrect. For some reason, that's one of my pet peeves. Another one is "recommend me a ____". They're like nails on a chalkboard! Well, not quite that bad, but they stand out to me.
 
This will never happen to me as I have an image of my SSD stored on an External HDD...everyone should.
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Some time ago I did some research about recovering files from a failed SSD and what I found wasn't good. The general opinion was...takes a long time and is very expensive...may or may not work if encrypted.
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If my SSD failed (not encrypted)...it would take about 45 mins to put the image on the new SSD with nothing lost which costs much less than fingers crossed Data recovery.
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if the SSD has indeed failed and I am assuming you used LUKS to encrypt the drive using crypt setup. Also if the LUKS header also got damaged - did you make a backup copy of it? If not and that header got damaged as well - you are up a creek with no paddle
 
Stellaris said:
My entire password database was in that hard drive. I forgot to backup it on another device.
Click to expand...
Not my intention of smearing salt onto a bleeding open wound but just one of the reasons I think storing passwords on any computer is just dumb.

For whatever reason I've heard this from users with failed HDDs / SSDs
ask what about my pictures and passwords.

My answer was always they should be on your backup drive.

Their answer was always I never created a backup drive and was going to create one but just never got around to it.

Sad but true and I to was once guilty of that and learned the hard way.

Everything on my computer that is important and needed is saved x2 at that moment on 2 external devices.

Why 2 external devices just in case one of them fail.

Keep in mind that Murphy is everywhere always waiting for opportunity to bite us in the the A$$.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'd try older version of SysResCD -- 5.3.2 -- recovered a LUKS partition in antiX this way, once, on an older BIOS machine.
 
DexTheDog said:
what type of ssd
Click to expand...
Its's a SATA and I am not quite sure whether it's sata 3 opal2.0. The SSD drive is from Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series.
 
Lord Boltar said:
if the SSD has indeed failed and I am assuming you used LUKS to encrypt the drive using crypt setup. Also if the LUKS header also got damaged - did you make a backup copy of it? If not and that header got damaged as well - you are up a creek with no paddle
Click to expand...
No unfortunately nothing was backed up.
 
Bartman said:
was going to create one but just never got around to it.
Click to expand...
Yes this sums up what happened. I've been storing my data on one external hard drive, one internal hard drive of another computer which isn't connected to internet and on Clouds (data is encrypted before uploading, of course.) since this happened.
Nothing matters, if I could at least open my encrypted photo folder.
 
forester said:
I'd try older version of SysResCD -- 5.3.2 -- recovered a LUKS partition in antiX this way, once, on an older BIOS machine.
Click to expand...
I could've given this a try but the ssd is not even detected
 
perhaps a silly suggestion....but try unplugging the ssd, and then rebooting...and then plug it back in again
 
Condobloke said:
perhaps a silly suggestion....but try unplugging the ssd, and then rebooting...and then plug it back in again
Click to expand...
Yep already tried this. Didn't work though. Thanks anyway
 
Once you have your new SSD up and running with a Distro and everything else...create an image with Foxclone https://www.foxclone.com/ and this will never be a problem again except the cost of the new SSD.
m1212.gif
 
Stellaris said:
I bought a Thinkpad t450 few months ago and it came with an Intel 256GB SSD.
Then I wiped windows and installed Endevour OS on it and encrypted it using Cryptsetup.
But I forgot to check hard drive health when I bought the laptop and unfortunately it failed to boot after using a week.
My entire password database was in that hard drive. I forgot to backup it on another device.
It's a long story, I am not going to bore you telling about it.

So, my question is, is it possible to recover a failed SSD which is encrypted?

I called several hard drive recovery companies and it costs a lot, but I am willing to pay that amount. I remember the password, but I don't know if it makes impossible to recover a SSD when it is encrypted. This is the very first time I faced a problem in this area.
Any help, advice is very much appreciated.
Click to expand...
This is very interesting to me, once that professional recovers your data, let me know how it goes...i've been interested in how easy it would be to recover information from an encrypted device, part of the reason why i'm just not interested in encrypting hard drives.
 
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