seagate encription fails on files larger than 4GB

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Seagate Go USB drives

All files less than 4GB encrypt and decrypt fine.

IF the files exceed 4GB the encryption utility from Seagate craps out.

This is true even if the files are encrypted using the Seagate utility on another drive ie the hard disk.

Maybe a NTFS vs. FAT32 issue. My guess only.

Interestingly enough when the files were encrypted there was no problem! They encrypted fine.

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

Now having tossed the original files I'm stuck with a significant data loss.

Any suggestions ?

Posted 13-Apr-11 7:22am

Ad_Icniv

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#realJSOP · Answer 1 · 2011-04-13T09:06:00

If you have the EXE file for the encryption utility, you could right-click, select properties, and click the Details tab to see if the company name is shown there. If not, you could use a hex editor to browse the exe file itself, and you might find the comapny name in there.

If none of that works, goole MIGHT help (you might search for the name of the software), but it looks like the acronym that most likely applies here is "SOL".

Ozer Karaagac · Answer 2 · 2011-04-13T15:56:00

Solution 2

There is a 4GB file size limitation on FAT drives. But the problem is not with it as I understand from the sentence "This is true even if the files are encrypted using the Seagate utility on another drive ie the hard disk." (assuming the HD is NTFS formatted)

How does it crap out? That is;
What is the resulting file size after a file greater than 4GB in size is encrypted? cuts out 4GB or same size of the source?
What does happen when you try to decrypt 4GB+ file if any?
Do you have that encryption utility on hand as a stand alone executable?

If you give more details, maybe, I can help you further.

Posted 13-Apr-11 15:56pm

Ozer Karaagac

Updated 13-Apr-11 16:13pm

v2

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Ad_Icniv 14-Apr-11 7:17am

Ozer
Thank you for responding
The file encrypts fine. The size of the original file and the size of the encypted results are analogous. I have encrypted a file of 26GB and got a 26GB encrypted file.
When decrypting, the utility runs fine for some time and returns a "Password incorrect. Please enter the password you used to encrypt the file." message. At first I thought I entered the password wrong but after several tests I proved that not to be the case. I'm guessing this is the only error message they have because the decryption display (a scale that shows the amount of completion)never gets to 100%.
The encryption/decryption utility is encryption.exe It is a Seagate Technology application created 1/18/2007. The application is 258KB in size.
Regards,
roxyco

Ozer Karaagac 14-Apr-11 8:23am

You're welcome. :-)
It entered my head that the files might have been encrypted for only 4GB portion and the rest would still be in unencrypted form. If so, encrypted part (say, first 4GB) could be copied out into a new file, could be decrypted there and could be merged with second part. But the encrypted part might or might not be 4GB exactly, that is, 4 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 4294967296. It might be (4GB - n) where the n might be 1 or any arbitrary number.

The best way to understand this. You can inspect a file grater than 4GB with the help of a hex editor. You should inspect it in both original and encrypted form in order to find out the position where encryption ends.

The second way that comes to my mind, maybe, you can use an enhanced file comparison utility.

Regards,
Ozer