Solved! Valuable files lost using PrivacyRoot Secret Disk

Jun 20, 2019
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Thinking my files were safe turned out to be a big mistake when they were all lost after a hard drive crash. I am able to read the files from an external drive but unable to boot from it and therefore unable to open the drive that Secret Disk creates. PrivacyRoot told me I was out of luck. What can be done to recover these valuable files?
 
Jun 20, 2019
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Thanks for the suggestion. I set up a pc with Linux once with the hope of sticking with it.. but reverted back to Windows... I don't have the time at the moment to go that route again.. but its an interesting solution I didn't know might work.
 
Thinking my files were safe turned out to be a big mistake when they were all lost after a hard drive crash. I am able to read the files from an external drive but unable to boot from it and therefore unable to open the drive that Secret Disk creates. PrivacyRoot told me I was out of luck. What can be done to recover these valuable files?

Since you had those files in a special virtual disk, you will not be able to get them outside of the Windows setup that disk was created in, which is probably what the company told you.

Did you check with them if you can somehow copy the virtual disk to working system and get to it using your password?

The Linux boot may help you get the files, but it won't help you run the program you used to protect the files. You may be able to clone the drive onto another one and see if that boots. You would need to make a boot disk using Macrium Reflect or something and use that to clone the failed disk to another one. May not work though if there are issues with the original disk.
 
Jun 20, 2019
6
0
10
Since you had those files in a special virtual disk, you will not be able to get them outside of the Windows setup that disk was created in, which is probably what the company told you.

Did you check with them if you can somehow copy the virtual disk to working system and get to it using your password?

The Linux boot may help you get the files, but it won't help you run the program you used to protect the files. You may be able to clone the drive onto another one and see if that boots. You would need to make a boot disk using Macrium Reflect or something and use that to clone the failed disk to another one. May not work though if there are issues with the original disk.


PrivacyRoot said they would not offer me any help whatsoever, which really surprised me. What they offer is not protection, but vulnerability far in access of what you have without their product. I have tried repairing the drive and the Windows installation, without success... it refuses to boot. Physically there seems to be nothing wrong with the drive... I'm not sure how to create a "virtual drive", but I will look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
Jun 20, 2019
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I created a clone of the failed OS as a VHD on my Windows 10 system... using Disk2vhd v2.01 Everything went as expected. I did a system file check on the drive using command prompts and found no integrity violations. I havn't done this before, but my guess is that I will have to change some bios settings in order to boot into it.... will give it a shot when I have time.