Using recovery key on external non-bootable drive

[monstermash]

I have an external, non-bootable drive that is Firevault encrypted. My password doesn't seem to be working.

I have a number of possible recovery keys to try, but none of them work when just trying to mount the drive to the desktop, or when trying to mount the disk using Disk Utility. They may not be the right key, but I maybe I am doing something wrong.

With respect to my specific situation, an external, non-bootable drive, when and where are you supposed to be able to use a valid recover key?

• Should it work when turning on the drive and it tries to mount it?
• Within Disk utility?
• Reboot into recovery mode and try it there?

I really think one of these keys should work. But then, I although really think my password should work too.

Thanks,
mm

 

[Fishrrman]

"I have an external, non-bootable drive that is Firevault encrypted. My password doesn't seem to be working."

Filevault-encrypted?
And... the password you have won't work?

Then... forget about it.
You're not getting that data back.

I could be wrong, but that's pretty much "the end of the story".

This is why I DO NOT USE Filevault.

 

[monstermash]

"I have an external, non-bootable drive that is Firevault encrypted. My password doesn't seem to be working."

Filevault-encrypted?
And... the password you have won't work?

Then... forget about it.
You're not getting that data back.

I could be wrong, but that's pretty much "the end of the story".

This is why I DO NOT USE Filevault.

Total non-answer to my question.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Total non-answer to my question"

Look at your original post.
I see a dialog that is requesting entry of a password to unlock the drive in question.
If the password you have won't work -- if it won't unlock the drive -- then you're out of luck.

Without the correct password, I believe the correct answer is:
NOTHING will make that drive readable again.

Where, specifically, was I wrong?
(others please jump in and correct me)

 

[NoBoMac]

@Fishrrman is correct: you're out of luck.

First, it's an external drive, so not FileVault encrypted, just "plain" encrypted, so recovery keys do not apply in this case. And since you don't know the password, did not save it in Keychain, there is no option to reset the password without wiping the drive.

3. Create a password for the disk and click Encrypt Disk.

Important: Be sure to record and keep this password in a safe place. You cannot access the data on the encrypted disk without it.

Protect your Mac information with encryption

On your Mac, you can encrypt information on removable media such as CDs, DVDs, and memory cards and require a password to decode it.

support.apple.com

 

[monstermash]

First, it's an external drive, so not FileVault encrypted, just "plain" encrypted, so recovery keys do not apply in this case. And since you don't know the password, did not save it in Keychain, there is no option to reset the password without wiping the drive.

Well, that sucks.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Well, that sucks.

Look at the bright side. Your data is safe!

 

[clueless88]

That is one of the reasons that I am hesitant to encrypt any of my drives--I could see forgetting my password and losing my data.

 

[monstermash]

Look at the bright side. Your data is safe!

Well, not so much. I correctly guessed my password. However, there is nothing on the drive.

I hope Apple doesn't have any kind of "auto delete with too many guesses" functionality.

I THOUGHT all of my backups were on this drive. But it's empty. So that leaves the question, where are all my backups?

That is one of the reasons that I am hesitant to encrypt any of my drives--I could see forgetting my password and losing my data.

I try to avoid this by using a formulaic approach. The formula is:

YYYY!!HowLongILivedThere!!YYYY

Where the YYYY at the beginning and end are the years I moved in and out. The idea is that I should be able to come up with the password just from the name of the drive.

For example:
If the drive's name is "Texas" the password would be: 1995!!!ThreeYearsInTexas!!!1998

However, for the drive in question, I had the wrong number of years. It should have been "Sixteen" and for some reason, I used "Thirteen". I just set it up wrong by spacing out on the math. Fortunately, I was able to come up with it after 20 guesses or so. I will need to re-do this drive with the correct password.

In the meantime....where the hell are all my backups? I'm out of drives to look at.

 

[Fishrrman]

"where the hell are all my backups?"

The data that was in the "backups" -- does the data still exist on the original source volumes?
If so, I wouldn't worry about it.

Instead, "clean up" the problem drive, and do "fresh" backups.

Again, my recommendation is to NOT encrypt this drive, unless you have a VERY good reason to need encryption.

I have never encrypted a drive in "regular use" in 37 years of personal computing.
There's ONE exception:
I keep a drive with personal/financial info as an "off-site" backup in my car. The drive has 4 partitions, and the partition with the sensitive data on it IS password-protected (via disk utility).
I reckon someone could steal the car, and end up with "a drive" -- but NOT with the data.

 

[monstermash]

Well, mystery solved.

Long story short, I kinda randomly discovered that 2 years ago, I ordered an 8TB drive from Amazon. I found the drive in my vault room. I have not turned it on yet (another long story), but it is labeled "Master Archives 02/18/2021".

I totally do not remember ordering this drive, or doing the work - but apparently - two years ago I decided to consolidate all of my various "micro-sized" drives with backups everywhere into a single large drive. I must have erased the "source drive" Anchorage in the process, since I had everything off it.

I will continue to use encryption - I have EVERYTHING in this backups - that goes back 20 plus years, including all kinds of sensitive financial information.

And yes - I need to get around to having an offsite duplicate of this drive. I am sure I was planning to do that after I finished my initial effort of consolidating onto this unit, which I never did (life happens).

What a relief!!

 

[clueless88]

Depending on how much encrypted data you have on the 8TB drive, it may be good to use the smaller drives to backup portions of the larger drive--for ease may want to use the same passwords on all of them. If the 8TB drive decides to give up the ghost, you'd have the backed up data on easy to get to drives.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I will continue to use encryption - I have EVERYTHING in this backups - that goes back 20 plus years, including all kinds of sensitive financial information.

If the only place something exists, is in the backup - you don’t, by definition, have a “Backup.”

 

[monstermash]

Depending on how much encrypted data you have on the 8TB drive, it may be good to use the smaller drives to backup portions of the larger drive--for ease may want to use the same passwords on all of them. If the 8TB drive decides to give up the ghost, you'd have the backed up data on easy to get to drives.

I got the 8GB drive because I ran out of space on my various smaller drives.

My fundamental problem is that getting my stuff organized and situated is a work in progress - and I never have time to get it done. If I could ever get it done, then I could just clone that drive and have proper backups.

It would be a lot easier if Apple didn't make working with photos with their Photos app such a pain in the ass (by my definition).

At this point, I would pay money for an app that would scan a hard drive for image files and then copy those files to a new location, organized by year. That would really help me a lot. I guess I could write it myself as a bourne shell script, but I don't seem to have time for that either.

 

[Brian33]

At this point, I would pay money for an app that would scan a hard drive for image files and then copy those files to a new location, organized by year.

I haven't (yet) used this utility, but if you're willing to use Terminal commands, osxphotos seems to be able to do that pretty easily, for free. It doesn't "scan a hard drive," but it will scan your default Photos Library (or a specified one, if you have multiple).

Below I just copied a portion of the "Tutorial" section of the README file:

"You can use the --export-by-date option to export photos to a folder structure organized by year, month, day, e.g. 2021/04/21:


osxphotos export /path/to/export --export-by-date


With this command, a photo that was created on 31 May 2015 would be exported to: /path/to/export/2015/05/31

Specify directory structure​

If you prefer a different directory structure for your exported images, osxphotos provides a very flexible Template System that allows you to specify the directory structure using the --directory option. For example, this command exported to a directory structure that looks like: 2015/May (4-digit year / month name):


osxphotos export /path/to/export --directory "{created.year}/{created.month}"


The string following --directory is an osxphotos template string..."

 

[RhetTbull]

I got the 8GB drive because I ran out of space on my various smaller drives.

My fundamental problem is that getting my stuff organized and situated is a work in progress - and I never have time to get it done. If I could ever get it done, then I could just clone that drive and have proper backups.

It would be a lot easier if Apple didn't make working with photos with their Photos app such a pain in the ass (by my definition).

At this point, I would pay money for an app that would scan a hard drive for image files and then copy those files to a new location, organized by year. That would really help me a lot. I guess I could write it myself as a bourne shell script, but I don't seem to have time for that either.

> At this point, I would pay money for an app that would scan a hard drive for image files and then copy those files to a new location, organized by year.

No money needed -- this should do the trick. I'm also the author of osxphotos which @Brian33 mentioned -- osxphotos will happily export any photos in your Photos library(s) using a directory structure of you're choosing.

I've also got my own solution autofile that automatically moves files based on metadata. It uses the same template engine as osxphotos so you could do something like this:

autofile --target ~/Pictures/FiledPhotos \
--directory "{exiftool:created.year}/{exiftool:created.month}" \ /Volumes/ExternalDrive/*.jpg --walk

But it works on file extensions not "all images" so you'd have to fun it multiple times with different extensions.