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I've accidentally encrypted my 8GB usb stick instead of my 4GB stick and now I need to revert the encryption on the 8GB one. There doesn't seem to be an option like this in the TrueCrypt interface when I mount the USB.

Anyone know how to do this?

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Purely guessing/workaround:

Based on how long it takes to encrypt certain volumes, my guess it will take ages to remove the encryption.

I highly recommend you simply mount the volume then copy everything off of it, format the stick and then move the items back to it.

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That's what I mean. I'm not trying to reverse the encryption, and I've already got backups of the files on the stick. However I don't think simply formatting the drive does anything to remove the truecrypt partition (I was reading the faq and they said you could reformat whenever and keep the encryption) – MaxMackie Mar 31 '11 at 19:29
I would be very surprised if formatting would not remove the encryption - it may be talking just about formatting the mount point which obviously would have no effect. – William Hilsum Mar 31 '11 at 19:33
Alright so I guess my question then is how to do that :) I've just migrated to OpenSuse and found the disk manager/partitioner. However I am unable to format the actual device. Also, I'm not sure what this means, but I've got 2 device mappers for the key. Each named truecrypt and each of the same size as my key. – MaxMackie Mar 31 '11 at 19:39
Im not sure about the device mappers - I am not a *nix expert. You would not be able to directly format the stick... The stick just has a partition that is most likely formatted (possibly without a mount point) to something that only truecrypt understand - Truecrypt then mounts this to a mount point. Formatting the actual parition that truecrypt mounts will not do anything - but formatting the partition that the truecrbypt volume is on will wipe it.... Perhaps use Gparted if you can - I find that very easy to understand on *nix. – William Hilsum Mar 31 '11 at 19:56
Formatting will not remove the encryption (although it will potentially overwrite it), it will, however, create a new unencrypted partition, which should work fine for your needs. If TrueCrypt is installed in the MBR, you may also want to wipe the MBR so it doesn't prompt by doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/HD count=1 bs=446 (leaves partition table intact but removes bootloader), or dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/HD count=1 bs=512 (removes partition table AND bootloader). You can create another in fdisk with the o command. – Matthieu Cartier Mar 31 '11 at 20:15
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Since you've said you already have your files saved elsewhere, all you need to do is delete the TrueCrypt volume and then re-format the USB stick. If you mount the USB stick (not the TrueCrypt partition), then you can simply re-format that and the TrueCrypt encrypted partition will just go away.

Alternatively, you can use fdisk (or whatever GUI disk manager OpenSuse has -- I'm a terminal man myself, though) to delete any/all existing partitions on the USB stick, then create a new (non-encrypted) one in its place. So long as you don't get TrueCrypt involved here, this will leave you with a formatted and unencrypted USB stick.

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