truecrypt
I have a truecrypt volume on a hard drive. When I try to mount the volume from the hard drive I get an error with Incorrect password or not a truecrypt volume. If I copy the truecrypt volume onto my local hard drive and then mount it, it works fine.
Any ideas?
This is very important! TrueCrypt system encryption partition DOESN'T CONTAIN TRUECRYPT HEADER. Non-system Truecrypt encrypted partition or file container contain header at first 128 blocks and backup copy at last 128 blocks of file/partition. So it's to impossible to decrypt systen encryption partition without backup header. Header of system partition is at the last block of hdd's first track. You can backup header:
dd if=/dev/sdx of=header.img bs=512 count=1 skip=62
If you want to access partition backup you have to clone partition to same size primary partition to different hdd and mark it as bootable. Then you have to restore header. First check if the first track is empty:
sfdisk -l /dev/sdy
If first partition strats at block 63 or more it's ok but if it's lower block number you can't continue. Restore your header
dd if=header.img of=/dev/sdy bs=512 count=1 seek=62
The you can access your backed up system partition using "Mount partition using system encryption without pre-boot authentication".
Theoretically you can convert Truecrypt system partition to standard Truecrypt parition or file container but you would have to chage some bytes in encrypted header. (decrypt header, change and encrypt again) http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=volume-format-specification byte 124 and 252
I submitted the bug report to trueCrypt. I found how to replicate the problem though. If you dismount a volume from a program that has no admin rights and then you try to mount the same volume into the same drive latter with a program that has admin rights it does not work. Same thing happens if you do it the otherway arrownd. So in short if you always mount and dismount without admin priviledges you are fine.
In my case I was creating a program that ran with admin privileges. And everytime I executed TrueCrypt.exe I had problems because trueCrypt.exe was running without admin privileges. What I have to do to solve the problem was to change:
now my program and trueCrypt.exe will both run with admin privileges and now I have no problems ;)
Best Answer
I used to get this same problem and searched the net and tried everything others had. I was on a Lenovo 64 bit laptop (T410) running Windows 7. I had a separate logical drive and was encrypting the entire drive. The HDD on my laptop is a 500gb, 150 odd for my C drive and another 350 odd for my X drive. I encrypted my entire X drive (logical drive).
True Crypt was working fine and then suddenly one day after using it for about a month, it just would not mount and kept telling me the password was wrong (the password was not wrong). I actually deleted the partition and started all over again. And it worked fine for a few days and then i had the same issue again.
anyway i tried everything but eventually i got it working by changing my drive letter for the mount.
I suspect that something i installed was locking up the partition so when i changed the drive letter from x to s it suddenly started working again. I changed this in My computer, Manage, Disk Management, right click on the drive and then change the drive letter.
Hope this helps others who may have had the same issue.