Filevault nightmare

[wozzerage]

Okay so ive been having alsorts of filevault problems since replacing my hard drive!

Firstly i replaced my hard drive, did a time machine restore and then couldn't access my user area SO,

I have put in my old hard drive again and tried to turn off file vault, haha good one, it requires 125GB of free space just to do this!

What can i do to get my new harddrive running? im happy to start from the begining if i can with my new hard drive but i dont know how to do it?!

Please help!

 

[Weaselboy]

So on the new drive you have what?... the OS and your old account?

I would use Migration Assistant instead of restore to bring over your data.

If you already made a new account on the new drive, you should delete it. Make a new temp account called "temp" or whatever. Now login to that account and delete your old account and alll the data along with it. Now while in the temp account launch Migration Assistant from the /Applications/Utilities folder and point it to the Time Machine backup. That will import your old account and all data.

Once the Migration is done, logout of the temp account an back in to your old account that was imported. If everything looks good, delete the temp account and all its data.

 

[wozzerage]

Thanks for you help but I don't understand how I can create a new user on my new hard drive as I can't get on my old account?!

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for you help but I don't understand how I can create a new user on my new hard drive as I can't get on my old account?!

Okay... I was not clear on what you had on the new drive and that you could not even login to the old account.

With the new drive installed can you do a command-r boot to the recovery partition? Hopefully the Time Machine restore put on the new drive.

If a command-r boot gets you to the recovery partition, start Disk Util and erase Macintosh HD then reinstall the OS. This will take a bit as it has to DL from Apple's servers (4.7GB).

If you can't do a recovery partition boot from the new drive. Put the old one back in and use this Apple utility and at least a 1GB USB key to create a recovery key.

Once you make the USB key, put the new drive back in and option key boot to the USB key. Then use Disk Util to erase the drive and install the OS.

At the end of the OS install in either case, run Migration Assistant and use that to import your old account/data.