Ping Frank

[Gamma]

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?

[Frank McCoy]

Post by Gamma
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.

[Gamma]

Post by Gamma
Hi Frank. I have a problem and you might have some helpful comments to
offer.

Nope.

Oh well...thanks anyway

[A***@NOT.AT.Arargh.com]

<snip>

Post by Frank McCoy
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 ....

Encryption of indivudal files is reasonable, as long as you maintain
enough backups. Same as any other file. :-)