FreeAgent Products

[redheat]

hi everyone

 and thank you in advance for any answer to the above question. I know that it sounds like an obvious question but not in this case. To simplysummarize the whole thing. I created an encrypted folder on my Seagate FreeAgent Go which hold the followng prodcut number: 9KW2AH-502 and has 500 GB capacity, and into that folder I placed a backup of all my personal folders. I attached my external seagate harddrive to my windows 7 powered compute, and after a few days and for a number of reasons I had to reformat and reinstall windows, so far so good, cause all my files were protected and safe. Now, I reattached Seagate to my newly installed OS, and reinstalled Seagte manager, but this time I did something very stupid, don't know why I did it, I just did.

 I cut and paste all the folders located inside the Encryption folder unto my windows, and deleted the "empty" folder afterwhile,and those .bin files I deleted them too, so I was only let with encrypted folders and nothing to go back to?

 These folders contain all my windos 7 personal folders, such as My documents, My pictures, My videos, so as you can see I'm dealing wih files of differets types, the videos folder was always empty, but all the others are full, I mean almost 10 GB of personal folders alone. I've searched here using the search term "decrypt" and it turned out a few posts about how people were having a problem with the seagate manager per the installation process or they were having a problem transferring their fils from the external harddrive to their desktops which are two problems I never faced. My backup is full and intact nothing is missing from  can see all my files within my folders, and all the documents let them be .pdf or .docx, or .jpg yet when I try to open them they give that message of filecould not be opened and in the case of the word documents it tell me they're ecrypted and asks me which language should I use and garbled characters underneath with the word Matrox Encryption written above. A sign that all my files are encrypted, the same applies to any photos where I cannot see any preview of them, even my favorites under favorites folder I cannot open them, they all are listed nothing is missing, yet internet explorer cannot open them because they are encrypted.

 can anyone please tell me what to do? any suggestion? anything to try is more than welcomed over here. And thank you all for taking the time reading my post

regards

redheat

[ibtwisted]

Not to hijack your post, but I have done the exact same thing with my 320 GB Free Agent Go, with the exact same results. Unable to open any of the files due to the encryption that I did not know was on there when I deleted the original folders. I called the tech support number from SeaGate and talked with a decent enough guy after a 30 minute hold time. He said I was pretty much screwed, there was nothing at this time that could be done. I find that hard to believe that no one can say "naw man, just press this and type that and presto! your good to go...." But so far it does not sound good. I will be watching this post everyday now, though, in the hopes that a SeaGate moderator will come to the rescue and steer us in the right direction. Good Luck.

[chand51]

I too do not intend to hijack your post but have a similar issue. I am in a little better position as I have the backup data on my external hard drive(EHD). My case is as below:

I have 500 GB Freeagent GO external Hard drive(EHD). The data backup on the drive is encrypted. After the backup was taken on EHD, i deleted the original data from my laptop.
Auto back when disk is connected was enabled in seagate manager. Now few files were placed in one of the origianl directories in laptop and some time later, when EHD was connected, auto back up was executed and the lates files were backed up on EHD. So the earlier set of back up files, about 60 GB, was moved to history versions.

Now after I reinstalled my Windows XP operating system, I cannot find any option in the seagate manager to decrypt or restore history version. Although I can see the hidden encryption folder on EHD and the old content in it from 'windows explorer'.
Simple copy from EHD to laptop does not work because the data is encrpyted.
 I have searched the community and have found following posts with subject line similar to my query but there is no answer found.
1) "Free Agent Go, files not visible but still present... "
2) "how to decrypt encrypted files?"

Kindly assist to help me restore my encrypted backup data.

[EyE]

Hi,

My situation is similar to all you guys. I recently deleted all my picture files worth 8 years, in the Encrypted folder. There was no way to undelete it, so I needed to use another software to recover them. Luckily I managed to get tem back, but it cannot be viewed because it was encrypted. I tried all the things that you guys did, and to no avail. I remembered using my EHD to play videos on my Go Flex Media player, and seeing the hidden folder "encryption folder". Under Windows OS, you cannot see it, but on a different platform (e.g. Unix) you can. Copy your encrypted files/folders back inside that folder, and when you plug it back onto Windows and launch Seagate manager, and then the encrypted folder, you can now see and decrypt it. I tried it and it works. I hope this helps. I'm into IT so I may have an advantage. If you need help get in touch with me.

[j2c2roxyco]

I have had a similar problem and according to Seagate if the files exceed 4GB you are out of luck.  Less than 4GB such as

anyfile.ste

You should be able to use the Seagate decryption algorithm located in the file Free Agent Tools.

Sometimes when the files are encrypted they may read

anyfile.jpg.ste anyfile.zip.ste

or the like

These will decrypt to anyfile.jpg or anyfile.zip

Try changing  the suffix appropriate to the file type with the suffix ste (i.e.. anyfile.doc.ste) and decrypting it

[j2c2roxyco]

This looks promising for an alternate problem. I do not have an encrypted drive or folder but individual files on various platforms including drives and OS .

IF  the files exceed 4GB the encryption utility from Seagate craps out due to NTFS vs. FAT32 drive issues. My guess only.

Interestingly enough when the files were encrypted this was not an issue ! They encrypted fine.

Seagate's answer was that will not correct the problem because the company that wrote the algorithm no longer does business with them. They also declined to give out the Company's name so that I might broach the problem with them.

I have an Ubuntu PC that I can use to try your method to decrypt these files if you would be so kind as to provide some more detail.

Regards