Performed factory reset, cannot access encrypted drive.

[Gabriel Rodolfo Perez]

Good Afternoon everyone,

I was curious if anyone new how to decrypt a drive if neither a .key or pass phrase was generated. This was my first FreeNAS build and I followed the advice of my coworker do a factory reset after I ran into some FTP issues and now I can't access my drive. Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to maybe fix this?

 

[cyberjock]

So you created an encrypted pool, then didn't download a key or passphrase in the past. Fast forward to today and you did a factory reset and your pool is now not mounting and you want to know how to recover?

 

[Gabriel Rodolfo Perez]

Yes sir. This was my first attempt at any sort of network attached storage, I don't even remember clicking the box to encrypt. So I just thought to myself, oh I will just import the drives after I do a factory reset, so I didn't bother to save the drive's contents else ware. I called several data recovery services to no avail. At first when it asked me to provide the passkey all I provided was the admin pass, but that didn't work, so then I thought it was an error so I tried to mount the drive else ways, that didn't work either.

So I am trying to see if there is one generic key or override key for drives that never initialized a .key file or a paraphrase that was never set. I hate my first post to be one of error and me begging for help but it looks like it is impossible everywhere else.

 

[Gabriel Rodolfo Perez]

Also is there any way maybe to recover the old config file before that factory reset? I am a complete newbie to Linux and don't know how to go about searching through Linux file systems, much less a file deleted off one.

 

[cyberjock]

1. This isn't linux. This is FreeBSD, which is closer to unix.
2. No, you are supposed to backup the config file before you do the restore. So your config is gone. :(
3. There is no generic key. That would defeat the point of the encryption. If you didn't backup your key and passphrase then your pool is encrypted and forever inaccessible unless somehow a vulnerability is found that allows you to crack it in the future. This is why the manual says to back these up and store them in a safe and secure place.

 

[Gabriel Rodolfo Perez]

Ok thank you so much cyberjock, one more question, what is the best way to explore the file system of the usb that i have FreeNAS installed on?

 

[cyberjock]

go to the CLI and explore via the command line.

 

[Gabriel Rodolfo Perez]

Again sorry, CLI the command line interface of a windows rig or of freenas shell?

 

[warri]

I think the USB is formatted as UFS, which Windows cannot read. So you have to use FreeBSD or FreeNAS.