I have a usb flash drive formatted as APFS encrypted on Catalina and after a while the password is “lost”.
I’ve got around it by copying all the data from the USB to my HDD, and then reformatting the USB, but it’s not an ideal situation.
Anyone know why this happens or a solution to the problem?
Thank you in advance
Antonio
I believe you can do the same thing with MacOS Extended (Journaled). I believe Catalina still allows it.
Don't rely on USB sticks for backups. USB sticks are very unreliable. Use a traditional USB hard drive for your backups. I don't have a lot of faith in the current consumer USB hard drives either, but they are the better option since you don't get bit errors like you do with a USB stick. You should definitely have backups on at least two different drives.
I believe you can do the same thing with MacOS Extended (Journaled). I believe Catalina still allows it.
Don't rely on USB sticks for backups. USB sticks are very unreliable. Use a traditional USB hard drive for your backups. I don't have a lot of faith in the current consumer USB hard drives either, but they are the better option since you don't get bit errors like you do with a USB stick. You should definitely have backups on at least two different drives.
I'm assuming by "flash" drive you mean USB stick. The quality of USB sticks is extremely poor plus APFS is a very new file system that does become damaged. I know there is a slight difference in how encrypting the file system on an external drive is a bit different than the way Filevault encrypts the boot drive (I don't recall the specific differences). So far my SanDisk USB sticks have been more reliable than many other brands. Just make sure not to put your only copy of your data onto a USB stick or it may become corrupted or lost entirely.
Hi "HWTech",
Thank you for your response.
Yes, I am referring to a USB stick and yes its is a 32GB SanDisk.
Fortunately this USB isn't the primary back up but is a secondary back up.
Strangely the primary back up is on a Transcend USB stick and it never loses the password.
Just BTW, is there an alternative file system (besides APFS) which will allow me to create a password encrypted stick.
Hi,
Thank you for your response.
kups
I'm a touch paranoid when it comes to backups so this USB stick is a partial backup and is not my primary backup.
I use Time Machine to do a full backup on 3 USB 2TB hard drives and you right in that on the USB hard drives which are all encrypted I've never had an issue with passwords getting "lost".
Thank you for your input.
The password & decryption key for the encrypted volume is also stored on that same volume (encrypted). All it takes is one bit to get flipped for the stored password or encryption key to be rendered useless. I have tested many different USB sticks for bit rot and the majority of USB sticks end up having at least one bit flip from time to time.
I'm glad this is not your only backup (so many people have relied on USB sticks for backups).
USB drive loses encrypted password
