HELP....EFS recovery

Hey I figure this is probably impossible as I can't seem to find anything to do it, but I figure "Keep on trying". Anyway here's the situation:
My computer has multiple HDD's and the master HDD fried itself one day and so I had to replace it, now all the files I had encrypted are to this day still encrypted. Now at the time I didn't have a backup of the encryption key (an Issue that has been rectified now), so basically I don't have any way to decrypt or recover the key (so far as I know) for these files. Does anybody know how or where I can go to recover files encrypted with EFS?
If you do and can help it would be greatly appreciated....so thanks in advance.

 

I'm puzzled :confused... you say that you didn't have the back up encryption key, then you said that situation is rectified, then you say that you need the key (????) If you rectified not having the key, why do you need the key if you rectified not having the key? Am I missing something or am I just a bit slow? Please clarify your situation and I'll try to help!

hopperdave2000

 

I didn't backup the key before thats why I can't access the encrypted data. Since then I have backed up the key so this doesn't happen to me again. But the data that was encrypted when the HDD was fried is still encrypted because I didn't backup the key. So now I'm looking for a way to recover the key/data that is encrypted. Does that make sense?

 

Thanx for clearing that up So there's two sets of encrypted data: one set with a key (and this is OK) and a 2nd set w/o key that is still encrypted and cannot be decrypted... check these links:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/cryptfs.mspx
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Understanding-EFS-Windows-2003.html
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/cryptographyetc/efs.mspx

This should help you out....
Good luck!

hopperdave2000

 

There's also some programs available that will do the recovery for you but (so far) I haven't been able to locate any freeware apps. If I find anything, I'll let you know.... try Google-ing 'recover efs encrypted files' or something similar...
Here's a link I just found. It's a bit technical, and I didn't really read all the way thru it, but it looks pretty promising. You'll probably want to print it out:
http://www.beginningtoseethelight.org/efsrecovery/