Recover data off corrupted external hard drive

[NFLSurvivor]

Good day, I recently used VeraCrypt to encrypt an external hard drive (Seagate 1TB) and long story short, the drive is now corrupted and unfortunately I do not have a complete backup of the drive. Windows 10 does not recognize the drive and wants me to format it. I believe it is in RAW state.

I have used a number of free tools (Recuva, TestDisk, Mini Tool Power Data Recovery, M3 Data Recovery) and a paid one (Kroll Ontrack EasyRecovery) to try to recover the data, to no avail.

EasyRecovery detected and recovered the most number of files but I was not able to open them because they all seem to be corrupted. What is unusual is I used EasyRecovery to recover a number of deleted files off the main hard drive, as a test, and I still could not open/play them either. That leads me to believe there may be an issue with EasyRecovery but I am doing further research into this.

Could you please advise what my next step should be before I contact a local professional data recovery shop for estimate? It will not do me any good if they are able to recover the files and I am not able to open them.

Thank you very much!

[RolandJS]

"...I recently used VeraCrypt to encrypt an external hard drive..." My first guess is that the data recovery programs cannot interpret, cannot un-encrypt, the files.

[MindMergepk]

It could be that drive is failing due to bad sector or FW problem or it could be that master key or critical data is damaged.

I would suggest to send it to Decent DR company and get the estimate.

good luck.

[data-medics]

"...I recently used VeraCrypt to encrypt an external hard drive..." My first guess is that the data recovery programs cannot interpret, cannot un-encrypt, the files.

Exactly this. Of course the data isn't recognized by Windows or data recovery software. It's ENCRYPTED!!!

If you used veracrypt + a password to encrypt, then you'll logically need to use veracrypt along with the password to get the data back.