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#1 2016-02-07 09:23:16

fseven
Member
Registered: 2015-04-15
Posts: 16

Recover Luks Header

Hello!
I've recently bought a new graphics card and wanted to compare it's performance under Arch to that of Windows.
After installing Win10 on a seperate Disk, i got a message about not being able to read a disk and initializing it with GPT. Since the disk I installed windows on was new, I didn't think too much about it.
Only after booting Arch again later I realized it had actually written a GPT to my storage Hard Drive, which was encrypted with dm-crypt, so it seems to have overwritten the Luks-Header:

sdb      8:16   1   2.7T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   128M  0 part

Now cryptsetup tells me it's not a valid LUKS device and I completely forgot to backup the header when i setup the drive.
Thankfully the data on the drive isn't too important or rather everything important is backed up somewhere else but it would still be nice to get it back.


Is there any chance to recover the Luks-Header?

Last edited by fseven (2016-02-07 09:23:27)

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#2 2016-02-07 12:14:26

graysky
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Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
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Re: Recover Luks Header

I think you're out of luck but wait for more a experienced-based opinion before you nuke it.  To kill the partition, do I understand correctly that __the windows 10 installer__ modified all disks on your system?


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#3 2016-02-07 13:02:03

frostschutz
Member
Registered: 2013-11-15
Posts: 1,409

Re: Recover Luks Header

If the LUKS header is overwritten, there is no way to recover, unless you have a backup of your LUKS header or you just happen to know the random master key and all encryption settings.

Where was the LUKS header located? Directly on the disk first sector without partition table? Then it's gone for sure.

If it was on some partition and that partition offset was different from the partitions that were created by Windows, maybe you can still find it at the old partition offset. But if it started at the very first partition (1MiB thereabouts) and Windows formatted that, then it's gone too.

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#4 2016-02-07 15:57:06

fseven
Member
Registered: 2015-04-15
Posts: 16

Re: Recover Luks Header

graysky wrote:

I think you're out of luck but wait for more a experienced-based opinion before you nuke it.  To kill the partition, do I understand correctly that __the windows 10 installer__ modified all disks on your system?

Not all disks, just the encrypted one (probably because it wasn't partitioned as far as windows can tell) and not the installer, it happened on the first boot after installation I think.

Where was the LUKS header located? Directly on the disk first sector without partition table? Then it's gone for sure.

Sadly, yes.

I guessed as much, thankfully nothing too important was on the disk.
Thanks for your help though!

Last edited by fseven (2016-02-07 16:02:11)

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