Chye Chuan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> i tried out your method but it still did not work out. Then i send the
> external drive to a data recovery company to try.
>
> however they inform me that they also cannot recover the data. reason
> given was the data was encrypted by my previous notebook (that runs on
> XP).

Well, that's what comes from leaving out the one really essential piece of
information. You'll get inaccurate answers and people wasting their time
trying to help you.

> I am very sure that i did not encrypt data at all as i was using Maxtor
> Backup Manager to conduct the backup on a daily basis.

If the data recovery company is a reputable one, then their assessment that
the data is encrypted is most probably correct. You may not remember
encrypting the data, but data doesn't magically become encrypted all by
itself. I don't know anything about Maxtor Backup Manager. You might want
to contact Maxtor for further help and/or see if Elcomsoft can help you.

http://www.elcomsoft.com/

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!