Recover Data from Ext. Drive Half Formatted with Truecrypt

[prometheus]

I was encrypting a hard drive (160GB) to be used for backup using Truecrypt. My computer went to sleep while this was happening and the operation got canceled. I just clicked "Back" button once and just tried to encrypt again. Now, Truecrypt encrypted a wrong hard drive that was about to be backed up. I know this is Truecrypt's bug because it encrypted 320GB hard drive to 160GB partition. Well, all my life data was there without a backup. I was wondering if there is a way to recovery. I tried Recuva on the encrypted partition, but without success, as it is written over with random bits. But I was wondering if I could recover data from the other half of the drive.

[einstein9]

chk with winhex for data inside, and see how bad is it before using any software and waste your time my dear

and start from there

good luck

[prometheus]

Thank you for your reply. I did scan with winhex and found some English words translated from the HEX code still there, not only in the unpartitioned space, but also in the partitioned (encrypted) space.
So what would be my next step to recovery?

[dick]

Can you not use your rescue disk to fully decrypt the 320gb partition?

Working on your original drive would be dangerous so my first move would be to clone the drive/partition to a spare hard disk. Then run Truecrypt disk rescue to see if it can find the partition and then attempt to decrypt.

[quasimodo]

options are pretty limited. If you are a good coder you might be able to code something. otherwise If you have the funds you might be able to hire someone. As for public, open source and commercial tools, I don't believe there are any out there that will be of use in your case.

[Keatah]

First of all, image the disk, and work from there. Then determine the areas that partitioning and truecrypt touched. Next use something like R-studio to work on the untouched areas. That might be as far as you get unless you are quite skilled.

But without actually seeing the disk in my office, I would not care to speculate how much is encrypted and wiped over.