In alt.fan.frank.mccoy Gamma <gamma@coldmail.com> wrote:
>Hi Frank. I have a problem and you might have some helpful comments to
>offer.
>
>I had a serious hard disk failure. Macintosh laptop, IDE drive. Becaue
>I'm no newbie, I was able to recover 99% of my data (though it took me
>six days). The drive became useless in the process and I have trashed
>it.
>
>One file that I transferred over to the new drive I bought is a PGP
>disk. Ostensibly, it looks fine but it will not open.
>
>It's not a password problem. I know the passphrase. The virtual disk
>itself is corrupted somehow. PGP version 9.06 reports that it cannot
>proceed with the "open" request because "it was encrypted with an
>unsupported algorithm" (It was, in fact, created by this same copy of
>PGP an not all that long ago, either). Double-clicking does not produce
>the expected passphrase dialog box but I can still see the disk in the
>PGP Open dialog.
>
>DiskWarrior finds no fault with the partition on the new drive that it
>is on. TechTool Pro reports the file is ok. Drive Genius says it's ok.
>Copying it over to another partition does not make any difference. Data
>Rescue cannot help. Interestingly, FileSalvage does not even see the
>file.
>
>I can open the data fork with Resourcerer and HexEdit but, as you would
>expect, there is no way to ascertain what needs to be edited in order
>to repair the file.
>
>The disk does not contan anything illegal so I would have no problem
>sending it to a professional firm if I have to. On the other hand, they
>are expensive, and the content doesn't really justify a big outlay.
>It's just commercially-sensitive data that I can live without, though
>inconveniently.
>
>Ideas?
Nope.
Considering what and how PGP works, there are methods to try if you had
the *original* disk; but not much with the encrypted file. Pretty much
the same thing with a compressed disk too ... Which is one reason why I
recommend *never* compressing a drive. Buy a bigger drive instead, if
you need more room. The problem with either is that you pretty much
need the *complete* and *intact* file for the decompression or
unencryption routine to work properly. There are ways to try and
recover the bad data from the original so it copies correctly (You only
need that once.); but once it was copied badly, and you try to access
the bad copy, you're pretty much screwed.
Yet another reason I don't believe in encryption either.
Some people are *forced* to use encryption ... and yet when hard-drives
go bad, they lose more data that way ....
Sorry about that.
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