I don’t even know where to start. I know my password. The external hard drive is drive d on my computer but I don’t even see a drive d on my veracrypt app.

Once I find it, how do I remove the encryption so I can use it as a normal hard drive?

Also, I do have the option to format the drive when I click it from explorer. Don’t know if that is another way to remove the encryption.

How are we supposed to update VeraCrypt? I'm using version (1.26.18). I go to the website that's listed in About but the download never begins. GitHub only has instructions on how to build it. I'm not Bob the Builder. All I want is an exe file to install

Another member opened my eyes that family photos should be accessible if something happens to me. I mainly didn’t want strangers to have access. Is there a way to remove the encryption so if something happens to me, the HDD is accessible to anyone?

AES is the default and has hardware acceleration on most modern CPUs. But VeraCrypt also offers algorithms like Serpent, Twofish, and cascades (AES-Twofish-Serpent).

Is any of them actually stronger than AES in a practical sense, or is there no real-world security benefit?

I’m curious because I don’t want to lose my family memories. I am tempted to buy a new HDD that supports password functions to avoid losing my data.

I saw a video that says to backup or copy something to a computer. I don’t believe I saw that prompt.

Hello, I tried downloading from the site but it looks like the link is broken?

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

I've been using Cryptomator a lot, and one thing I do not like about it is that it doesn't matter how much parity you have for a file, if the encrypted .c9r file gets even a single block of data corrupted, then the decrypted file is entirely useless with no way to recover it.

if I encrypt a non-system partition with VeraCrypt, will it have the same weakness as Cryptomator to data corruption?

I am not necessarily worried about permanently losing data as I have multiple backups of all my important data. I am wondering if the parity files I'm creating are entirely useless if stored on a VeraCrypt drive.