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Recently, I had to do an OS reinstall. I keep my home folder encrypted in the event that my laptop were to be stolen, people wouldn't have access to my files.

Using ecryptfs-recover-private, I was able to successfully mount and copy all my files over to a new user profile. However, I was now running low on disk space since I now essentially have a duplicate home folder. How do I remove the old encrypted home folder short of reformatting my /home partition?

I am unable to log in as the old user as the OS reinstall has already occurred. The only way I can read the files is to use the recover-private option.

Alex
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    Possible duplicate of [How to stop using built-in home directory encryption?](http://askubuntu.com/questions/4950/how-to-stop-using-built-in-home-directory-encryption) – DnrDevil Feb 21 '16 at 16:16
  • It is not a duplicate, since I did the reinstall and was unable to login as the user to decrypt the files that way. – Alex Feb 21 '16 at 22:35

1 Answers1

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All of the encrypted files are stored under /home/.ecryptfs. Simpy navigate to there, open the folder as root and then delete the folder that is your old username. My old username was alex, so here is what I did:

sudo -i
cd /home/.ecryptfs
rm -rf alex
exit
Alex
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