help needed to recover encrypted data off the phone

jpitou

Member
Oct 3, 2010
12
1
0
Chicoutimi
Here is a quick review of what happened:
The phone was running well on Lineageos 14.1, encrypted with a pattern, with TWRP 3.1.1 as recovery. I’ve then been notified of an LOS update to 15.1 Oreo and got excited. Booted in recovery, entered my pattern to decrypt, took a full TWRP backup, flashed Oreo modem and firmware and dirty flashed (I know, bad idea) the LOS 15.1 zip.

It got stuck at boot logo. Even if I didn't have high expectations for it to work I just thought I would try the lazy way to see and use my fresh backup to restore in case of failure like I always did successfully since my Nexus One.

This time was different because as I rebooted in TWRP to restore, it didn't ask for my pattern. You guessed it, the data partition is encrypted, no access to my backup or anything on the external storage. I can mount data and see the weird encrypted file names but that's it. I tried different version of TWRP, but it never ask the pattern. Even the terminal command 'twrp decrypt *******' doesn’t work.

I then tried to wipe data and flash LOS 14.1 again but it gets stuck saying that android has no access to data partition because it’s encrypted and that I need to format. I pulled out my sim card and started to use my old oneplus one while waiting for the new version of TWRP 3.2.1.1 with the feb security patch support thinking it might then be able to decrypt but no luck still.

I can go without the phone for a while, I’ll buy another one if I have to because there is some precious data on that phone and I can’t make my mind that the data is there, I know the encryption key but I have no access to it. There must be a way, I just don’t have enough knowledge about how this encryption thing is working.
Any help would be appreciated, Thank you
 

PS-DEV

Senior Member
Dec 26, 2014
113
55
0
Jeddah
Here is a quick review of what happened:
The phone was running well on Lineageos 14.1, encrypted with a pattern, with TWRP 3.1.1 as recovery. I’ve then been notified of an LOS update to 15.1 Oreo and got excited. Booted in recovery, entered my pattern to decrypt, took a full TWRP backup, flashed Oreo modem and firmware and dirty flashed (I know, bad idea) the LOS 15.1 zip.

It got stuck at boot logo. Even if I didn't have high expectations for it to work I just thought I would try the lazy way to see and use my fresh backup to restore in case of failure like I always did successfully since my Nexus One.

This time was different because as I rebooted in TWRP to restore, it didn't ask for my pattern. You guessed it, the data partition is encrypted, no access to my backup or anything on the external storage. I can mount data and see the weird encrypted file names but that's it. I tried different version of TWRP, but it never ask the pattern. Even the terminal command 'twrp decrypt *******' doesn’t work.

I then tried to wipe data and flash LOS 14.1 again but it gets stuck saying that android has no access to data partition because it’s encrypted and that I need to format. I pulled out my sim card and started to use my old oneplus one while waiting for the new version of TWRP 3.2.1.1 with the feb security patch support thinking it might then be able to decrypt but no luck still.

I can go without the phone for a while, I’ll buy another one if I have to because there is some precious data on that phone and I can’t make my mind that the data is there, I know the encryption key but I have no access to it. There must be a way, I just don’t have enough knowledge about how this encryption thing is working.
Any help would be appreciated, Thank you
Try flash codeworkx TWRP ...

it should decrypt your data partition ...

https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/cheeseburgerdumplings/15.1/cheeseburger/recovery/twrp-3.2.1-0-20180309-codeworkx-cheeseburger.img?r=https%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fcheeseburgerdumplings%2Ffiles%2F15.1%2Fcheeseburger%2Frecovery%2F&ts=1521806282&use_mirror=netix
 

jpitou

Member
Oct 3, 2010
12
1
0
Chicoutimi
I had tried it when it came out and I just tried it again. No difference!! It looks like twrp doesn't even see that my phone is encrypted. I've read a lot and tried many different things and I'm out of idea. All of the people I've seen with this problem have given up so they could get their phone back and running by formatting the partition, losing their data. This option is not one for me. I'd rather buy a new phone hoping for an eventual possible solution. I know the data is there, and I know the pattern key...... I mean, there's got to be a way......
 
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