So, my asus, after I reset it, it just wants to encrypt itself. A normal people would be okay with that, but I am not, because I can't mount my phone partitions without entering a password that my phone puts to my internal hard drive, can I find that password or decrypt my hard drive. I don't care if I reset my phone, I just want that to stop, or to find that password.
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Hi,
I encrypted my phone to allow it to sync to my work email exchange. However, I didn't realise that I would lose access to the SD card for flashing new ROMs. Now I have deleted the email account which required encrypting as mandatory.
Cannot seem to find an easy way to reverse the encryption permanently.
Is a factory reset the only option to get back to the original state?
Thanks in advance
I wanted to do a factory reset (i.e. remove everything from /data except /data/media/0), but ended up formatting the partition, partly because the Materialised Theme rearranges the buttons, partly because I am a bit dumb seemingly...
After I realized what I just did, I immediately piped the whole partition onto my PC using dd and netcat. I hoped to be able to recover my photos and the /data TWRP backup I did before using photorec, but it couldn't find a single file :crying:
So does TWRP reset every bit of the partition to zero when formatting it?
Or could there be another explanation on why photorec doesn't find anything? Could there be any chance that I'll see my data again?
It's flash memory, tricks that would work on a physical hard disk WILL NOT recover any data. I am sorry but it is not possible, by ANY means, to recover your data.
It sucks I know but please take this as a learning experience on the value of off-device backups. You can upload twrp backups to Google drive directly from the phone for easy secure storage and recovery.
Also Google will sync and backup your photos if you enable it, for the future.
Hello,
I unexpectedly had to do a factory reset on my S7 while the SD card was encrypted, as result the SD was not obviously readable afterward.
I saved part of the encrypted content of the SD card (basically the pictures) before formatting it and starting using it again, however I'm not able to recover this content.
I tried with the procedure I found on internet:
- saving the encrypted data
- format the SD card
- encrypt of it
- copy of the saved content back to the SD
- decrypt
However, at the decrypt state the phone don't move from an 'Analyzing SD card' phase.
Any idea? I'm afraid I should have saved all the content of the SD card...
Thank you
You should plug the SD card on to your PC using an SD Card reader. Open up CMD, and type diskpart.
After which, type list volume, and you will see the "drive letter" of your SD Card, type clean and afterwards...
Proceed to typing create partition primary size = "insert capacity of SD card here (mb" *w/o the quotation marks*
After which, type assign letter=F
It should work fine after this hopefully.
When you encrypt the SD card, Android makes a unique key that is stored in the Android trust store. When you factory reset the device, that key is lost. Permanently. Remember, the whole point of encryption is so malicious parties cannot access your data. If you could just read it again after factory resetting then there isn't much point is there? Your only option is brute-forcing it.
Always backup. Always.
CurtisMJ said:
When you encrypt the SD card, Android makes a unique key that is stored in the Android trust store. When you factory reset the device, that key is lost. Permanently. Remember, the whole point of encryption is so malicious parties cannot access your data. If you could just read it again after factory resetting then there isn't much point is there? Your only option is brute-forcing it.
Always backup. Always.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you
I do have a backup, however it was more convenient to restore the 20GB of photos from the SD rather than from the cloud.
I was reading some guides on internet with this procedure that's why I tried.
I will survive, thank you both for your answer
Mone181 said:
Thank you
I do have a backup, however it was more convenient to restore the 20GB of photos from the SD rather than from the cloud.
I was reading some guides on internet with this procedure that's why I tried.
I will survive, thank you both for your answer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If somehow it was possible to backup the encryption key which is generated randomly on each phone then it would be possible to decrypt it on your PC even if the phone was damaged using your password and encryption key. For some stupid reason this is not implemented in Android (but it was doable for some devices), for example TrueCrypt or Microsoft Bitlocker allow it.
difto said:
If somehow it was possible to backup the encryption key which is generated randomly on each phone then it would be possible to decrypt it on your PC even if the phone was damaged using your password and encryption key. For some stupid reason this is not implemented in Android (but it was doable for some devices), for example TrueCrypt or Microsoft Bitlocker allow it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I thought the encryption was based on pin of the phone actually.
Lesson learned
Hello,
I have similar problem, but with Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. I made factory reset but didn't decrypt SD card before. SD card was ejected before reset, so I have all the datas, but cannot open them.
Is there any chance that I may recover my photos and videos if I don't have any backup?
Best regards.
Anyone?
Hi everyone
I kinda have the same problem. But the difference in my case is that I didn't reset the phone. While operating normally, one day it gave me a notification that encryption has failed. When I touched it, a page opened with the button of decrypt SD card at the bottom. I thought a restart would fix the issue. But when restarted, the contents of my SD cannot be accessed. I tried to decrypt it manually but in the settings, it thinks that the SD is unencrypted and only gives me the option to encrypt it, which obviously fails after every try. I was wondering if there is any way to trigger the decryption manually? Because I didn't reset the phone or anything and the data is still there. The phone just fails to see it.
Thanks in advance
Hey! I can confirm for 1000% the method you said worked for me:
- saving the encrypted data
- format the SD card
- encrypt of it
- copy of the saved content back to the SD
- decrypt
I deleted a video was able to retrieve it using Diskdigger on my pc. But then I was unable to open it because it was encrypted. So than I decrypted the SD in my phone only to find out the files were than unrecoverable deleted!?! Luckily I copied the files to my pc before decrypting!!! I used ur method and it worked decrypted it and everything played fine! Must say I was on the same os same phone(s8) so that must've been why it worked anyway still it worked. I'm happy, I acquired parental responsibility because of u?
I have made a similar stupid mistake I rooted my galaxy s8 and forgot to decrypt the SD card... now can anyone help me with the steps that I can fallow to decrypt the camera folder...
I to have a same problum ..
please any one find out the result of that data recover from encripted sd card from samsung a50
Hello guys, I have a S8+ 955U version tmobile. I was on oreo beta and wanted to revert back to 7.0 latest which is G955USQS2BRB1. I odin the files but it caused me to format my internal memory. i lost all my photos of my newborn.
How can I get them back?
I've tried a few programs but I have to be rooted which I'm not.
I found a thread SAMPWNED to root device but I can't downfrade that far back.
Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. no i did not have an sd card in the phone, all files were saved on internal.
It's really difficult to recover photos from a formatted internal SD card. Best option, I think, would be try some other recovery apps, so see if they have access to your phone, though I don't think they will have that type of low-level access.
Another possibility might be to use ADB and if you can, pre-system/security startup, enable ADB within the phone, and then you might be able to do a recovery scan of the phone partitions.
There are a few (vague?) how to's on using ADB to enter the phone pre-system/security. Search 'sonnettie', the author of one method, and you will likely find other author off-shoots of the same type of method. If I don't stay current with a thing, I forget most of the details, but that was his original(?) method, which as I was told, came to be used by others to get into the phone pre-system startup/security. It might have been obviated by the Oreo update with a bug fix.
Did you have Samsung backup configured? If so it should have uploaded the photos and you would be able to restore them. If you don't make a backup your photos are already lost, you never know when your phone might die, be stolen or in this case get formatted. Google photos is a good alternative to keep your photos backing up.
Some people have incorrectly stated that it is possible to recover the photos after formatting internal storage. The data partition is encrypted by default and unless you are able to recover both, encryption key (it was most likely overwritten during first boot after factory reset) and the part of the partition containing the photos, you cannot get your photos back. Also, I have not seen any commercial data recovery software, which is capable of finding encryption keys and deciphering corrupted data partition.
Exactly, the phone is encrypted, not remotely possible to recover the photos scanning the memory
sergioslk said:
Exactly, the phone is encrypted, not remotely possible to recover the photos scanning the memory
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
good to know.
Thanks everyone for your input. After spending countless hours trying to root phone so I could get a data recovery program on it, I gave up. Turns out I had google photos and Samsung cloud turned on and it synced all my media. I got all my media back on my phone.
Thanks guys
@OP
i want to remind you that if you are doing like updating, flashing, modifying, always make a back up thank god samsung cloud is doing that for you., but i always make a hard copy to my sd card always you newer know right. i am happy for you that you got your data back
Hi everybody, I think the title is quite self-explaining but here is the whole story... I had to do a factory reset of my Xperia Z5 due to some slowdowns, and I left the encrypted SD card inside while resetting because I had done this way before and never had any problem. This time though, after reset, many of the files on the SD card have become unreadable, mostly photos and audio files. Searching for a possible solution, I found that maybe i should have unencrypted the SD card BEFORE the factory reset but now I can't undo that so I have to figure out a way to recover the files.
The files are not completely unreadable, since the file manager can see them, and using some apps I have been able to recover some photo, but only the ones that were sent to me, not the ones I took with the camera. The few photos that survived can't be moved nor copied anywhere.
The phone is not rooted and I have no idea how to root it (i know the procedure but reading the forum I noticed that with Z5 there are some DRM problems I wouldn't like to face...). If there is some way to safely root it without losing more data I can consider it.
I tried with Linux forensic apps (like scalpel, foremost etc.) but they have an I/O problem and aren't able to recover the files.
The best solution for me would be to decrypt the SD card somehow... can anyone tell me if there is a way?
Thanks in advance
Never encrypt data drives... and never trust one data drive for critical data.
With no encryption key those encrypted files are lost. If the phone generates a random key (likely) then you be boned.