I encrypted my files on a hard drive external and lost

I encrypted my files on an external hard drive and I've reformatted my hard drive on my widows xp, now I get access denied when I try to access the files on my external hard drive. It can be recovered? I don't change anything on the external hard drive would have key codes have been stored on the actual computer or have it stored on the external hard disk where I have encrypted files? I change my username and password when I reinstalled xp.

The "key" to your files encrypted using the Encrypting File System (EFS) is stored in your certificate store, which is part of your profile on the Windows system drive.  The certificate itself is encrypted to your Secure ID (SID, which is a unique number created with your username) and your password in the user and who-knows-what else.  Whenever you use any encryption system, if you can't answer the question "Where is my stored encryption key", then you are begging to lose all your information.  When you destroyed your old system, you wiped out the encryption with her key.  Unless you can recover your system from a backup or "best practices" followed by backing up your certificate, I'm afraid that you have lost access to all your data.  Microsoft has tried very hard and succeeds in making transparent encryption keys - at the expense of people in your situation.

The following is required reading for anyone using EFS and he explains everything very well.  Pay special attention to the paragraph entitled 'Why you should back up your certificates' to the end.

"Best practices for EFS file system.
  <>http://support.Microsoft.com/kb/223316 >

For the same reasons you have at the moment, I chose to go with the "Truecrypt" freeware as an instead of the EFS encryption solution.  The keys are in my head like a password and I have not lost all data encrypted in 10 years despite having Windows terminally to the crash from under me several times.

Sorry to break the news,
HTH,
JW

Tags: Windows

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