Verify that the content of the volume is of type **LUKS Encryption**.

In the **Enter passphrase to unlock** dialog, enter the passphrase of your Persistent Storage.

In the **Authentication Required** dialog, enter your administration password.

<p>If unlocking fails at this step, your Persistent Storage is so damaged
that decryption is impossible, making all your data completely
unrecoverable.</p>

In the right pane, click on the new volume that appears below the **LUKS** volume.

Verify that the content of the new volume is of type **Ext4**.

This volume corresponds to the decrypted version of your Persistent Storage.

Verify that the size of your decrypted Persistent Storage is smaller than the available free space in the external hard disk.

Take note of the device name of your Persistent Storage.

The device name is composed of `/dev/mapper/luks`, followed by letters and numbers.

<h3 id="create">Creating the partition image</h3>

Choose **[[!img lib/system-run.png alt="Additional partition options" class=symbolic link="no"]]&nbsp;▸ Create Partition Image**.

In the **Create Disk Image** dialog:

In the **Name** field, specify *persistent-storage.img*.

In the **Save in Folder** menu, choose the external disk to which you want to save the partition image.

Click the **Start Creating** button.

After the creation of the partition image finishes:

If the creation succeeded, shutdown Tails.

You can now safely start [[recovering data from the Persistent
Storage|fsck#welcome]].

If the creation failed, try the second technique described below to [[create a partition image using `ddrescue` on the command line|fsck#ddrescue]] instead.