External encrypted hard drive not accepting password anymore

[christarp]

Hey guys, so I have an external encrypted hard drive and a second partition on it is for time machine backups. I decided to do a little cleaning of my mac today and moved a lot of stuff over to my external drive, and then erased the free space on my mac with one pass.

Each time I was backing up time machine it would take a while and it was going very slowly and it looked as if there were 390 or so GB of "other" on the time machine partition, and only about 60MB of "Backups" so I figured that was odd and all of those backups I decided I really didn't need anyway (I was 100% sure of this) and I wanted to give my time machine drive a fresh start. So I went to erase my time machine backups and that's where things got really screwy.

Suddenly my time machine unmounted itself and would not accept my password (which I am 100% I am entering correctly). so I figured that was odd and went to verify / repair disk in disk utility and then it says "Problems were found with the partition map that may prevent booting" and then I clicked repair and it couldn't complete it with an error message of "problems were encountered during repair of the partition map"

Now the time machine partition is greyed out and I only have the option to "unlock" it. HOWEVER, when I go to this and type my password it doesn't accept it. I cannot unlock my drive anymore. (At this point I am still able to access my 2.5TB partition dedicated to my movies and stuff), so I decided maybe I should reboot, couldn't hurt right?

Well I rebooted and now I can't connect to my movies partition either. The password on BOTH time machine and my extra movies partition are no longer accepted. Now, I have no access to either partitions on my external hard drive.

I still have all of my extremely important files on my mac, and another disk that has another copy of those important files. However, I do not have a backup of my movies. I'm hoping there's a way to fix this problem, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I would like to avoid formatting my drive entirely as there are a lot of blu-ray rips on there that I converted for use with the apple tv, and set up with the proper cover art and information. Any ideas?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Any ideas?"

Yep.

STOP using Time Machine for backups that you rely on.
You are already coming to understand why in "moments of extreme need" TM backups can be unreliable.

Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.

 

[christarp]

I mean to be fair, this isn't a moment of extreme need, this is just a more-than-mild inconvenience. All of my extremely important files are backed up onto at least 3 USB drives as well as my time machine backup. I'm just not sure what is going on with access to my drive being denied. Fair enough though.

 

[ilandmac]

Hey guys, so I have an external encrypted hard drive and a second partition on it is for time machine backups. I decided to do a little cleaning of my mac today and moved a lot of stuff over to my external drive, and then erased the free space on my mac with one pass.

Been at this for a while. While I do not have scientific proof, I have a lot of miles to show that Time Machine needs to be on a separate drive when the sh*t hits the roof. Otherwise it will be affected by (probably) an error you committed while doing your house cleaning on a drive that has a TM partition.

T.M works, but does not like to be shared with any other data. YMMV but when that disk is your only option,
it's nice to be dealing with just a clean T.M drive, or two for that matter...

ilandmac[/QUOTE]

 

[christarp]

Got it. Figured trying to mess with the time machine partition wouldn't affect my other partition for other "less important" data, but I guess I was wrong lol.

 

[christarp]

This is odd. Everything started working just fine today. Passwords were all accepted and everything was exactly as if nothing happened at all. Very odd.

 

[steve62388]

This is odd. Everything started working just fine today. Passwords were all accepted and everything was exactly as if nothing happened at all. Very odd.

Do you need an encrypted drive? Perhaps consider turning it off to avoid this in future.

 

[keysofanxiety]

"Any ideas?"

Yep.

STOP using Time Machine for backups that you rely on.
You are already coming to understand why in "moments of extreme need" TM backups can be unreliable.

Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.

Wow, whether or not your opinion is unfounded, you've really got to work on not sounding patronising.

For what it's worth I've never had any issues with using Time Machine for backups, nor has anybody else I know.

 

[christarp]

Do you need an encrypted drive? Perhaps consider turning it off to avoid this in future.

I've thought about this a lot and I'm not sure if I want to turn it off or not. I guess I don't really have to, but I live in a house with 4 other people right now (I'm a college student) and I simply like the fact that it's encrypted and password protected in case anyone were to try and steal something of mine.