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    IDE to SATA (and encryption) issue

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by A. Nonymous, Apr 13, 2007.

  1. A. Nonymous

    A. Nonymous Notebook Guru

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    My last notebook (with a 2.5" IDE HDD) stopped working months ago. The drive was completely encrypted with "Encryption Plus Hard Drive" (Blowfish algorhythm) right down to the boot sector meaning I need to boot from this drive or it appears blank.

    To read and recover my old files, I need to boot another computer from this drive.

    Solution 1:
    I hooked the drive to my new notebook (hp dv6000t) externally with an IDE to usb adapter. I set BIOS to boot from USB. The introductory screen, where the "EPHD" program asks for my name and password, worked normally. The next step, where the operating system (XP) attempts to load, gave me an error message.

    Solution 2:
    I thought I'd simply slap my old drive into my new notebook, boot it up, and move all my files to my 500Gb external backup drive. It turns out this notebook has the new SATA II interface, so it's incompatible.

    So...

    I want to connect my old 2.5" IDE drive to the dv6000t's internal SATA connector temporarily. The drive doesn't need to go inside neatly. Has anyone seen an adapter/cable that would do this simply and cheaply?

    Alternately: if there were some sort of decryption program which would allow Windows Vista to access the files on this drive while bypassing the boot requirement / OS loading, I could possibly go back to the USB cable.

    I hope I've explained this properly. Any ideas?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2015
    A. Nonymous, Apr 13, 2007
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  2. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Unfortunately, XP will be VERY pissy loading on new hardware. What was the error message that XP gave you when booting? There may be a way to let you "chain load" an OS or something, since that decryption program simply gives you access to the Windows bootloader. Welcome to your encryption doing it's job ;) Unfortunately, booting off of the internal SATA connector will work about as well as booting off the USB connection, I'd wager.

    EDIT: You MAY also be able to get it to load with TrueCrypt. I can't make any guarantees there, though. I do know that TrueCrypt supports the Blowfish algorithm, and it will load an entire drive instead of just a file, so that may be your way out. Try that first.
     
    Pitabred, Apr 13, 2007
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