Forgot to copy recovery key at install

I have reinstalled Zorin on zfs with encryption. At installation it offer to copy a "recovery key" but I did forgot to copy it. Can I recover my recovery key ? Or can I use the one from my previous installation with exact same setup on same laptop ?

In short, no. The purpose of encryption is to make data inaccessible. If you don't have the recovery key, you might able to decrypt it using the encryption password (I don't actually know how with LUKS) and re-encrypt, generating a new key, but that's about it.

As far as I am aware, that should be the only time you are able to get that recovery key, although I may be wrong on that. I was under the impression that it's kept on the USB key through the install, then once install is done and you reset, the key goes back to original state and does not save that information.

Hwoevver, is the problem that you can't get to the data now? Or that you are worried about getting your data in the future? If it's the latter, this article may be of some help :

It appears it may be possible to view your keys (although I'm unsure about the original recovery one) but you may be able to generate new ones and delete old ones.

I don't deal with encryption too much (outside of windows machines for work) so I can't actually help all that much when it comes to encryption on linux.

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OK, I understand now that the recovery key is only a LUKS key in a file in hex characters. I can delete the one created at installation and add a new one easily. It not a problem, I just didn't knew the exact use of that "recovery key".
Thanks for clarification. I will mark the post solved.

:+1:

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