Gordon Bazeley wrote:
> Hi guys,
> A bit of a cry for help I'm afraid. I've been using Vim to keep a
> diary for the last few years and somehow the file I use for this
> purpose has become corrupted through a system crash. I have a rather
> old backup but don't really want to go that route unless I need to.
>
> The file in question was encyrpted with VimCrypt and the file now
> looks a bit strange to say the least. There is a section of readable
> text at the top of the document (although notably NOT the text that
> was actually at the top of the doc when I last used it) and after
> about thirty lines or so the text becomes garbled for another 1600
> lines or so.
>
> I've tried copying the garbled text into a new file and prepending it
> with "VimCrypt~" but Vim is not recognising it as a crypted file (I'm
> not sure if this portion of the file is actually crypted or just
> garbled).
>
> A section of the garbled text is given below:
>
> =07=D9a=AA=F7Fhl=B8=89V=C6w[=9DSZ=FFoz)M82=A6=08=FB>=F4=EE=8C=8B=8B=F9=07=
> =89,
> =16m=E4=D0=F6=FE-[=03=86=FD=04=1C=FFc=BC=1F=E4
Before you do anything that changes your harddisk, try an undelete
program to find the swap file used during the last edit. The swapfile
is not encrypted. The name is normally ".filename.swp". Careful: As
soon as you start Vim on the same file it's likely that the old one gets
overwritten and undelete won't work. There is also a small chance that
you find a backup of the original file: "filename~". It should exist
even when 'backup' is off. But if 'writebackup' is off you won't have
it.
If you're very lucky, the system crash caused a swap file to stay on
your harddisk. Even when it's corrupted it contains the text (in
reverse order).
I'm afraid that otherwise there is hardly any chance to get the text
back. The encryption goes from the start of the file to the end. If at
some point the data is corrupted, the decryption for the rest will be
corrupted too.
--
Don't Panic!
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