I have a need to restore my MacBook Pro from USB Backup. The problem is the USB Hard Drive is a "WD My Passport" and it is password protected. When I plug in the drive at "OS X Utilities", the unlock app from the hard drive doesn't come up for me to unlock. Therefore, I'm not able to restore. Any suggestions?
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Restore from Password Protected USB Drive
- Thread starter rtan
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I'm guessing that this is what happens when you use proprietary 3rd party software (in this case, WD's) instead of Apple's.
I realize this doesn't help in this "moment of need", but I suggest in the future that you GET RID of WD's software and use only the native Mac OS software to format/erase and encrypt your drive.
Can you go to the WD support site, and then download a copy of their drivers/software, and copy that to your restored OS? It may have the necessary files to permit you to access the WD again.
I realize this doesn't help in this "moment of need", but I suggest in the future that you GET RID of WD's software and use only the native Mac OS software to format/erase and encrypt your drive.
Can you go to the WD support site, and then download a copy of their drivers/software, and copy that to your restored OS? It may have the necessary files to permit you to access the WD again.
The reason I chose to password is because I don't want to lose my data if I lose the drive....
How did you PW protect it? With FileVault?
If so, once you get to Internet recovery, open Disk Utility and select the drive then right click and mount it... you should get a popup asking for the password. Once the drive is unlocked use Disk Utility's restore function to clone the drive over.
The drive has an read-only partition with the unlock app. Normal condition, I would plug in the drive, run the unlock app and enter my password, then it mount the decrypted drive. I guess I can work around by just install basic OS then mount the drive and restore the data folder by folders. It just takes more time.
Yeah... if you used some third party app to encrypt/lock, that is not going to work from recovery so what you described is your best course.
In the future, forget the WD software. You can encrypt the drive easily (assigning its own password) on your Mac. I have several WD Passports and use the Mac to encrypt sensitive drives.
This! First thing I do with these drives is format them. NEVER use that software it comes with, EVER. This applies to all brands, not just WD. Only ever encrypt via the system.
Even Dell Data Protection Encryption has been hazardous. I was contracted to install this for a doctor's office for HIPAA compliance. What a cluster ****. Ended up having to reformat the hard drives.
Not sure how would it help here. I don't think "OS X Utilities" will allow you to enter password on the drive, even I you use Mac Encryption.
In addition, using Mac encryption will only work if you only have Mac hardware. I have Windows, Linux in my environment so my drives have to be able to access on none-Mac as well. There are many software encryption but I chose the WD solution because it's hardware based and it has the read-only partition with the unlock app in it. So, if I need to access it for a friend computer, it doesn't matter if he has Mac, Windows, or Linux, I can unlock the drive without having to install the decryption software on his computer. We can discuss about encryption technics but that should be on anther thread. I do appreciate your comments but I mainly look for solution to my current situation.
Another idea would be copy the backup data from the encrypted drive to an un-encrypted drive just to do the restore.
Read the chain... OP said he did not think one could unlock and access the disk even if "Mac Encryption" (FileVault) was used... and that is not the case.
Wouldn't OP be able to just create a random throw away account, then mount the drive in that user and after its decrypted, start up migration assistant? From there I believe you can just run the normal migration assistant and delete the original user account.
Sort of... see my old post here. You need to make sure the old (to be imported account) and the test account are not the same USERID or there will be problems.