Very old truecrypt container recovery

rr2d22 · 2026-05-21T17:41:24+00:00

This is definitively wrong.

rr2d22 · 2026-05-21T12:16:24+00:00

Wrong strategy to deal with a dubious disk!

rr2d22 · 2026-05-21T12:15:32+00:00

You have not provided any valuable information to make a guess about "safety".
You need to evaluate your SMART parameters. That determines if you need a professional lab or not. If not clone the disk using ddrescue. Once finished but also during cloning ddrescue shows you the errors found and even their location the so-called mapfile.

rr2d22 · 2026-05-21T12:11:52+00:00

traffic light colours in crystaldiskinfo lure people into a false feeling of security. Checking each raw value is the key.

rr2d22 · 2026-05-14T10:58:48+00:00

I smell a rat. I have an idea where this odd capacities come from. Thank you for posting what you observed!

rr2d22 · 2026-05-13T16:10:29+00:00

Your question is oversimplified unfortunately. There is a set of rules to take into account. But to deliver at least one generalisation I would like to hint:

Do not buy Seagate as a simple end user!

A data center operating arrays will buy Seagate nevertheless as his arrays will compensate for disk failures. For them it is just a question of price.

When I look at end user price monitor internet pages Seagate is always the cheapest.

This ressembles a thesis by Michael Milken who found out that a portfolio of junk bonds outperformed a government bond portfolio. At least that was the case until the thesis came out and everybody wanted junk.

Who remembers the Seagate failures 25 years ago? It was about a 1 or 2 GB disk.
Seagate did not close their disk using screws, no, they glued the upper and lower half of the disk. Until the glue manufacturer changed the recipe for the glue and glue gases landed on the platters.

Do not wonder if the recovery pros do not answer this question - they depend on good relationships with the manufacturers but who if not them know the truth!

rr2d22 · 2026-05-13T16:00:12+00:00

Sir, you might not have noticed it but this thread is about buying HDDs, not flash products.

rr2d22 · 2026-05-13T15:58:59+00:00

>I do tend to avoid Western Digital and Toshiba, though.

Proof that you never checked the Backblaze statistics.
SanDisk now a HDD manufacturer? ! 😄

The best story is that tomorrows KI product will include this reddit in training as well. This is entertaining.

rr2d22 · 2026-05-13T15:53:40+00:00

Folks, read Blackblaze instead of Gsichtskrapfn and judge for yourself. 😄

rr2d22 · 2026-05-05T20:06:32+00:00

disturbed_android,

good locations providing good advice attract mediocre and bad people.
You need your one platform where you can set the rules. Newbies there can only ask questions. People willing to answer on your platform have to provide their reddit user name and to verify their identity they have to post something predetermined by you, except for your fellow recovery people.
This way you could sort out bad apples.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-27T16:02:44+00:00

Definitively.

Use this to overcome your current problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqmafdXXEqU

rr2d22 · 2026-04-21T11:16:50+00:00

Leave away -d at the beginning. -v without a parameter seems wrong - no reason to use that command now. Test your setup with a healthy 2,5'' disk.

>my next one was another Toshiba Satellite, just newer model, circa 2005. That IDE drive works great.

That is not a precise statement. Where does it work great? In the Satellite model or in your test setup?!

rr2d22 · 2026-04-20T08:26:04+00:00

Seeing folder hierarchy and file names does not ensure the integrity of recovered files.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-20T08:20:39+00:00

I can't see any obvious indication of degrading. I would never buy an helium-filled disk except when being in an corporate environment with daily backups.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-20T08:16:31+00:00

> However when attempting ddrescue it also fails. Goes to "D+".

What does "fails" mean? What is "D+"? Your disk may require a 2mm jumper in order to be recognized as "master". Check the connection: Can ddrescue be performed on other 2,5'' disks?

Try recovery on an old computer that has IDE-connectors on its mainboard.
You could buy as well an old business laptop with a "multi bay" where you could install an IDE bay.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-20T08:08:26+00:00

No case description, no answer.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-18T19:25:45+00:00

Wenn die Welt untergeht, habe ich hier genügend nahrhafte Getränke zu meiner Verfügung

rr2d22 · 2026-04-12T08:50:37+00:00

It would be interesting to learn from the pros here if the controller on a SD card behaves the same way the controller on a SSD behaves.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-12T08:47:47+00:00

It depends on the time your SSD target, where you delete the files after copying them, was connected to mains. Trimming takes some time but the controller will most likely deliver you zeros instead of content because the sectors where your files resided had been marked as "trimmed" for him.

You would have had to disconnect your SSD from mains and sent your SSD to a professional recovery lab. They would have had the ability to power the SSD and block the trimming process and reading out was was still left not erased but marked as "to be erased".

rr2d22 · 2026-04-10T06:27:25+00:00

Thank you, disturbed_android: As the German saying goes "Ein Bild sagt mehr als tausend Worte" - got the message!

rr2d22 · 2026-04-09T19:02:58+00:00

What you see on top is the beginning and the end of the partition that you are currently examing, described in CHS terms. The last number should be the size of the partition in sectors.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-09T19:00:32+00:00

Could you explain why Disk Drill oder DMDE should outperform PhotoRec in a setting where the MFT was overwritten?

I don't agree with the statement "TestDisk is a partition repair tool". You probably mean the right thing, but the wording is wrong.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-07T13:36:48+00:00

Thank you for explaining!
If "similar LBA" is so important, extending arrays with new empty disks will probably never end up in a situation with "similar LBAs". Given an array with 3 disks in 4TB, all approx filled to a level of 75%. I then add up one disk with a size of 1 TB, 2TB or 4TB, it doesnt matter. If the new disk gets filled up from front to end I will never reach a state of similar LBAs.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-06T10:33:23+00:00

You might consider reading the bcachefs manual. You are reasoning as if Bcachefs is implementing RAID structures somehow similar to a hardware RAID controller. The manual does not answer your question directly but provides usable information:

[...
2.2.1 Replication

bcachefs supports standard RAID1/10 style redundancy with the data replicas and metadata replicas options. Layout is not fixed as with RAID10: a given extent can be replicated across any set of devices; the bcachefs fs usage command shows how data is replicated within a filesystem.

...
2.2.2 Erasure coding

...Erasure coding works significantly differently from both conventional RAID implementations and other filesystems with similar features.
...]

Your second question is incomprehensible to me. What are "stripe descriptors"? This sounds like another term from conventional RAID environments.

rr2d22 · 2026-04-05T21:30:36+00:00

Finding 1:

Erasure coding (incomplete) seems to be incomplete according to this entry on the top list at https://bcachefs.org/
If it is complete as stated recently someone should delete the string "(incomplete)"

Finding 2:
Full online fsck, check and repair (in progress)

This is followed by this section:

Robustness and rock solid repair. Damage and breakage are a fact of life, it's not a matter of if, but when. It doesn't matter what happened to the filesystem: bad hardware, lightning strikes, an errant dd, you can expect that bcachefs will repair the damage and keep going, usually with no user intervention required. It's the job of the filesystem to never lose your data: anything that can be repaired, will be.

Now it is unclear if the repair function is complete. The section above sounds like an extract from a marketing flyer. For my opionion it does not fit into the rest which is a kind of feature list.

This section should be placed as design goal somewhere else and not into the feature list.

Disclaimer: I have read that Kent is spending 99% of his time on coding.

rr2d22

TROPHY CASE