Dataquest

Data Recovery You Can Trust

Tag: Encryption

  • Where Is My Bitlocker Key?

    If you’ve been having computer problems, you may have been asked for your Bitlocker key. In most cases you won’t be able to access your files without this key. Even if you know your login password!

    Bitlocker should never be enabled without a backup of the key, but there are cases when that can happen by mistake. Fortunately the keys are usually saved into your Microsoft account, or other corporate network account.

    Where to look?

    For a list of ways to find your Bitlocker keys, see the official guidance by Microsoft. In particular, you should login to:

    • Your own, or any other Microsoft accounts that were ever used on your computer here.
    • Any work or school accounts that were ever used. Try to login with your credentials here.
    • If you had a friend or relative setup your computer for you, ask them if they made a copy of the key, or ask them to check the links above to see if your key was saved automatically into their own account.

    You’ve found the key, now what?

    Finding the key is only part of the solution. In normal operation you shouldn’t need to type your Bitlocker Recovery Key very often (or ever really). If you’ve got back in, it’s a really good idea to make a backup of your files ASAP. You may be in the middle of a bigger problem.

    If the key is not accepted

    If you’ve found the key in your Microsoft account, but the key is not accepted when you type it, you may already have an underlying disk problem. Keep the key somewhere safe, and then contact us about data recovery. We’ll need to recover the drive first, and then decrypt it using the key.

    Contact Us Now…

    For a fast reply from a real person.

  • Deleted iPhone Data

    On your iPhone when data such as photos and contacts are deleted, in most cases due to encryption your data is lost forever.

    One of the ways deleted data can be retrieved is by actually skipping the phone itself and heading for backups. Many phones automatically back up to the user’s computer or to the cloud. It can be easier to extract the data from the backup than the phone. Obviously the level of success depends on how recently the phone was backed up and the service used to store the files.

    If you have lost data on your iPhone see our services

    iPhone Data Recovery
    iPhone Data Recovery

  • Deleted Android Data

    As with the new iPhones your new Android when data such as photos and contacts are deleted, in most cases due to encryption your data is lost forever.

    One of the ways deleted data can be retrieved is by actually skipping the phone itself and heading for backups. Many phones automatically back up to the user’s computer or to the cloud. It can be easier to extract the data from the backup than the phone. Obviously the level of success depends on how recently the phone was backed up and the service used to store the files.

  • Windows Login Password: Is It Secure?

    Windows Login Password: Is It Secure?

    Just because you have a login password on your computer, don’t think your private data is secure. It would not take much to access the data without your consent or password. The best way to ensure your private data is secure is to encrypt your files. This comes with it’s own risks, especially if you forget your password and lock yourself out of your files. So you need to make sure you have backups at all times. Also don’t be fooled into thinking that if your files are encrypted, you are safe against ransomware type virus attacks. If infected by ransomware, it will just encrypt on top of your encrypted files. See other post on latest ransomware.

  • SandForce SSD Data Recovery Problems

    SandForce SSD Data Recovery Problems

    The low prices and high speed access of the Sandforce controller made it an appealing option for SSD manufacturers such as Toshiba, Intel, Kingston & OCX. But it soon became a problem for users when the SSD devices using these controllers started to fail in their computers after just six months of use. Usually it resulted in the device not being recognised by the computer bios, and not functioning at all.

    That was okay if you were happy to have it replaced under warranty by the manufacturer. The problem came when you wished to try and recover critical data that may have been stored on these SSD’s. The use of full hardware encryption on the controller and the device, meant that the data could not be recovered, even when using low level data chip removal.

    Fortunately today these controllers are not so popular, and as a result most mainstream manufacturers do not use them. But be aware that they can still be found in some non branded SSD’s.

  • Hard Drive Encryption Data Recovery

    Hard Drive Encryption Data Recovery

    Encrypted hard drives come in many forms. They can be created by the hard drive manufacturer as part of the hard drives firmware or as a third party software add on such as Symantec PGP or Microsofts Bitlocker.

    Hard drive Encryption is becoming much more common especially in many large enterprise companies. Some hard drive encryption is more sophisticated than others, but in many data recovery cases we receive, a common flaw is the inability of the encryption software to overcome bad sectors on a hard drive. In most cases it results in partial or no access to the decrypted data on the hard drive by the user or even their I.T dept.

    We have created an image and decryption process that allows us to recover the users data with the original file and folder structure intact. The time it takes to carry out this process will depending on the level of hard drive encryption used.

  • Bitlocker Data Recovery

    For the last few years, newer editions of Windows have the ability to encrypt the whole disk with bitlocker. This means far more users are experimenting with encryption. We have seen an increase in recoveries from drives secured with bitlocker.

    When Backups Go Bad

    Is Data Recoverable From Bitlocker Drives?

    In many cases the data is recoverable. It is important that we get the recovery key or password, as bitlocker security has not been compromised.

    Common Issues

    The most common problems we see with bitlocker encrypted drives are when the disk starts to fail, or when Windows becomes corrupt. This can prevent the built-in decryption process from working correctly and leave users locked out of their data. These drives can fail like any other, but the encryption adds an extra layer of complexity to the recovery process.

    Solutions

    If using bitlocker on your drive, it is important to keep a copy of the decryption keys in a safe secure place away from the computer. It is also extra important to keep a constant and regular backup process. Although recovery is usually possible from a failed bitlocker drive, it could take a number of days. You probably wouldn’t want to live without your files for that time.

    If you have a failed bitlocker drive that needs recovery, (and if you have the recovery key) get in touch.

    Contact Us Now…

    For a fast reply from a real person.

  • iOS vs Android Secure Erasure

    I’ve previously written about the difficulties recovering data from modern iOS devices. This new post by Avast(!?) shows it from another angle.  What happens when you sell an old device?

    TL;DR

    Because iOS uses hardware encryption on the main storage, recovery is almost impossible without the passcode. In contrast, Android phones (usually, by default) don’t encrypt the main storage. Also they allow external SD cards which may not be encrypted either. This means if an iPhone and an Android phone are sold or lost without being carefully erased, the iPhone will not easily give up the data but an android phone will. It also means if you forget your iPhone passcode you are unlikely to ever get the data back.

     

  • PGP Whole Disk Encryption

    PGP Whole Disk Encryption

    PGP WDE is an encryption tool that uses a boot loader installed on an internal hard drive. This utility launches before Windows and prompts the user to input their password. Without the password you cannot gain access to the data.

    This utility is widely used by IBM personnel and is now part of IBM’s  process that has to be adhered to by end users. Prior to this utility IBM hard drives were restricted access by a low level ATA hard drive password setup  by the internal IBM IT department.  As computer systems advanced and maybe as a result of a reduced IBM IT department,  IBM adopted the user friendly PGP encryption process.

    We regulary receive these hard drives from IBM, and we find that the major problem is related to the PGP boot sequence. PGP does not like a hard drive that is suffering from bad sectors, especially within the partition table. It results in the user being unable to load their access code on startup, or in some cases the code is accepted but does not boot correctly due to bad sectors further along.

    We have a lot of experience recovering data from PGP whole disk encrypted hard drives and as a result our data recovery process has a very high success rate.

  • What To Do When You Run Out Of Space

    It’s a common problem that as we generate more data each year we start running out of space to put it. This is now even more of an issue in the smartphone market, where built-in cameras are generating increasingly large photos and videos, without providing much in the way of additional storage. The most common iPhones are still 16 & 32GB but the photos they now produce can be megabytes in size, with videos easily reaching 1GB.

    What To Do When You Run Out Of Space
    What To Do When You Run Out Of Space

    It’s tempting to take that data and put it somewhere else, so either a laptop or external hard drive. Then once you’ve copied it all you delete it from the phone and gain back all that space. Problem solved.

    Not So Fast…
    If that copy on your laptop is now the only copy, then you could be one spilt coffee from disaster. If the laptop goes up in smoke, gets stolen, dropped or any of the myriad other ways of failing then it’s bye bye data.

    The Fix

    The key to making backups is redundancy. The key to making backups is redundancy. The key to making backups is redundancy.

    You need to make extra copies of your data to different types of storage. This could be an external hard drive, NAS, USB Pen, SD card, anything. But don’t just pick one of those. Make a few backups. Put one in a locked safe somewhere. Send photos off to the cloud. Store a copy of your music at your nan’s house. If any of those copies gets lost or broken you can just replace it with another copy.

    So let’s run through an example. All those photos on your iPhone have filled it up. Here’s what I would do:

    1. Copy the photos to my computer. Check them.
    2. Backup the computer as usual. (You’re already doing that, right?)
    3. Make another backup, or copy the photos to an online storage service like Dropbox.
    4. Now it is safe to delete the photos from the iPhone and revel in all that fresh space.

    Note: Deleted photo recovery is virtually impossible for all modern iPhone versions due to encryption. 

    Here’s another example for when your computer runs out of space instead:

    1. Is it possible to upgrade the internal storage? If it is then you should do that.
    2. If this is not possible, or too expensive then you will have to get creative. It will be more fiddly but copy all data to two external hard drives.
    3. You always want to avoid just leaving your data in one place. All electronic devices can (and will) fail, and they have a terrible habit of doing so at the worst possible moment.

    So, just remember that no single copy of your files are safe. Making extra copies is cheaper and easier than waiting until something fails.

    Thanks to Alexander Armstrong for inspiring this post.