External MacOS HD on PC - Access privilages

[Supersonic]

Hiya

Here's one thats got my head spinning a bit.

I've got a USB hard drive backed up with Carbon Copy Cloner, and have two user accounts. One is a main, open privileges 'user' account, and one not so open, with 'no access' which I use for work.

If someone was to open said HD on a Windows PC (or another Mac for that matter...) , do the access privilages still stand, or would someone have full access to the other part of the drive because its a different setup??

Reason I ask, said HD has been recently stolen and i've got reams of sensitive accounts/membership work I do on it which is privileged and wondering if accessing data on that locked user account would be easy, or just something you'd have to hack away at to access. :-(

Any help appreciated.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

If someone had a root account on Mac OS X, the data on that external HDD would easily be accessible.
I do not know about using Windows and having access to that "no access" user though.

In the future maybe make an encrypted disk image via Disk Utility or TrueCrypt, thus even if one can access the disk image file, one needs more than one super computer to actually decrypt it in time before the universe dies.

 

[chown33]

If someone had a root account on Mac OS X, the data on that external HDD would easily be accessible.

It doesn't even take a root account. Simply plug in the USB drive, do Get Info on it, and check the "Ignore ownership on this volume" checkbox at bottom of the Info window. It takes less than a minute.

And if I wanted to get access to an internal drive, I'd either startup the Mac in Firware Target Disk mode, or simply take out the internal HD and put it into an external enclosure. The first takes under a minute. The second under 15 minutes.

In the future maybe make an encrypted disk image via Disk Utility or TrueCrypt, thus even if one can access the disk image file, one needs more than one super computer to actually decrypt it in time before the universe dies.

This.