[ale] Help with data recovery

Jim Ransone jim.ransone at gmail.com
Fri Aug 21 21:05:40 EDT 2020


Bummer. As I said, I am not very tech savvy. I really don't even understand
encryption. This Deja Dup backup software was widely recommended and
encrypting all the files was the default. I didn't know enough to even
question this. Now I realize how stupid that was. They put warnings on
plastic bags so people don't suffocate themselves. You'd think they might
put a warning on software that encrypts all your data.



On Fri, Aug 21, 2020, 8:37 PM SpaXpert, Inc. <spaxpert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Unfortunately, if you lost your encryption key, then you're likely in the
> burnt toast department.  If you could find anyone to fix this situation
> you'd probably owe them a million bucks.  I've been working with Linux for
> over 25 years, and I'm definitely not the smartest ever, but it saves me
> from the bots.  That said, I would never encrypt my data with a sole
> encryption key that could be... never mind.
>
> Sad advice... I have a separate usb hard drive that I drag and drop the
> critical folders that I use for work occasionally.  That works for me, and
> everything is unencrypted.  10 years ago I lost tons of family videos and
> photos that I didn't backup due to a crappy hd controller on a crap
> motherboard.  Never again.
>
> I feel your pain.
> Doug.
>
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 8:19 PM Jim Ransone via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I found this group when searching for a local computer repair place that
>> works on Linux stuff. I am not a programmer or particularly tech savvy. I'm
>> hoping I can get some advice here, be it a recommendation on somewhere I
>> can go to pay someone to fix this, or tips on how to fix it myself.
>>
>> I did something that in retrospect seems completely boneheaded. I am
>> running Ubuntu Studio 20.04 on my laptop and was backing up my data to an
>> external hard drive using Deja Dup (which uses Duplicity.) I was trying to
>> fix some audio issues and somehow screwed things up pretty badly, so I
>> reinstalled Ubuntu Studio 20.04 hoping to take everything back to before
>> the audio problems. The reinstall erased everything. When I went to restore
>> my home folder from the backup, it's not working because of the encryption.
>> From an old forum thread I found about a similar situation, I was clued in
>> to the sad news that I probably erased the encryption key during the
>> reinstall. Doh! Suggestions included using testdisk to recover the data on
>> the laptop and manually restoring the encrypted files on the backup drive.
>> The latter seems very complicated and mysterious.
>>
>> I might be in over my head trying to do this myself. Anyone know of
>> anyone in the Atlanta area you would trust with a recovery job like this?
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations!
>>
>> Jim
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>
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