Ubuntu :: ERROR: Encrypted Private Directory Is Not Setup Properly

I'm currently running Koala on a Dell Latitude D630. I've been with Ubuntu since Hardy, so I have some experience, but this is beyond me. Basically, I was at school, closed my laptop, and bicycled home. When I opened it up at home, I saw a blank screen. When I tried to reboot, I was told that the disk couldn't be mounted. When I boot a LiveCD, I can see my two disk partitions (/ and /home) as "16GB Filesystem" and "95GB Filesystem". The 16GB system can't be mounted, and I'm pretty sure is fragged. I tried reinstalling Ubuntu, figuring that would fix it, but no luck- it starts fine, but it gets about halfway through and then says it can't install the files.

The machine is still under a service contract with Dell, so swapping out the HD itself isn't such a big deal. It would be nice to get my data, though. I can successfully mount the 95GB (/home) system. I then see two folders "dan/" and "lost+found/". I can't enter the "dan" folder because I don't have permission. Opening a terminal and navigating to /media/95GB Filestystem/dan/ works if I "sudo su root" first, but not as "ubuntu" In the dan/ folder, all I see is "Access-your-private-data.desktop" (because my /home directory is encrypted) and "README.txt". The README says to run the command "encryptfs-mount-private".

When I do that, however, I just get the message ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly I tried putting my decryption password immediately after the decrypt command, a la: encryptfs-mount-private mypasswordgoeshere but with no change in results. The one ray of sunshine in all this is that I backup my /home directory to an external every week or two. So the actual data loss is not catastrophic. But it *has* been a busy week, so I would really like to recoup that data, since it includes little things like the first chapter of my dissertation, and the job negotiation emails in my .evolution folder.