u/GrimReaper_77

Situation: Entire USB drive (SanDisk, ~460GB/494GB, bought via the official SanDisk Amazon storefront) is fully encrypted using VeraCrypt's whole-device encryption (not just a single partition). Drive started acting up: needed to enter the password multiple times to unlock, and once got past the password but the mounted volume was inaccessible with no error message — fixed itself after a dismount/remount. Eventually VeraCrypt flagged a damaged volume header.

What was done:

1. Used VeraCrypt's Tools > Restore Volume Header — this fixed the password/decryption issue (password now reliably accepted), but the mounted volume still shows as 0 bytes Windows (unformatted/unreadable filesystem)
2. Since the drive can't be safely "repaired" while RAW (chkdsk etc. don't work, and the data is too important to risk on the original), made a full sector-level image before attempting any further fixes:
   • First tried Testdisk, kept getting stuck in the 1 digit percentage range
   • Then AOMEI Backupper → hit a recurring driver error (Code 4140).
   • Switched to HDD Raw Copy Tool (lower-level, no driver dependency) → successfully imaged the entire drive with zero read errors, ruling out a catastrophic physical failure or counterfeit/fake-capacity drive.
3. Plan from here: convert the resulting .imgcv2 file into a plain .img, mount that .img in VeraCrypt (as a file, not a device), then run TestDisk against the decrypted drive letter to try to repair the inner NTFS boot sector — falling back to PhotoRec (raw file-carving) if that doesn't work.
4. Hit a detour: the destination drive used for the .img conversion (a separate 1TB external HDD, unrelated to the original sensitive drive) itself became unreadable mid-process and needed to be "Initialized" in Windows — its partition table is now gone too, ironically the same category of problem as the main issue. Not urgent — the original safety image (.imgcv2) is untouched and safe elsewhere, so nothing critical was lost, just need to redo a step.
5. Ran PhotoRec once already, but the results (only ~15 files found, all obscure/incorrect formats, zero real video/photo matches) strongly suggest it was actually scanning still-encrypted data rather than truly decrypted content — needs to be re-run properly once the .img mounts correctly.

Current status: Original drive untouched and not being touched further. A verified, complete raw image of it (.imgcv2) sits safely on the PC's main drive. Next steps: fix/recover the 1TB HDD (or pick a new destination), finish the .img conversion, mount it, and run filesystem recovery tools against the decrypted result.

This is a summary of a Problem I'm having with VeraCrypt at the Moment. I tried to fix it with claude and eventually lost track of what we did (therefore the Summary very obviously written by the AI) but failed after lots of tries. I hoped that maybe PEOPLE could help me.
Thanks