How can I access an external drive which is behind the Filevault?

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Level 1

56 points

How can I access an external drive which is behind the Filevault?

This morning my iMac refused to accept my password so I tried it several times with no luck. Also the so-called recovery key didn't awake my iMac. So I realized something serious happened with my boot disk, which is an ssd. Long story in short: I contacted Apple support and the guy helped through all (?) the possible start options which brought us to the conclusion that I had to reinstall OS X and after that make a new user account. Which I did. I have 1 external drives which is behind the FileVault key. I switched it on and (of course) OS X wanted the password. I tried my former password, no luck, and than the new one without success again.

What are my options (if there are any?)

Thanks in advance

Hans

macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Feb 7, 2018 9:50 AM

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Answer 1

KiltedTim

Level 10

225,864 points

Feb 7, 2018 10:04 AM in response to hanyvo

You pretty much don't have any options at all other than to re-partition and format the drive so that you can put stuff on it again. There is no way to recover the data that was stored on it since it was encrypted and the key isn't working.

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Answer 2

hanyvo Author

Level 1

56 points

Feb 7, 2018 12:19 PM in response to KiltedTim

Thanks a lot , Tim

I suppose thats all there is in terms of support for now. Can you suggest a sort of workaround for this? When I think back what Apple support advised me to do (reinstall OS X and make a new user account), wouldn't it be better to reinstall and set up the same user account and password?

Whatever your answer is, I must dig into and study all the stuff Apple has made public on the internet.

Thanks, again.

Hans

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Answer 3

hanyvo Author

Level 1

56 points

Feb 7, 2018 10:19 AM in response to KiltedTim

Thanks for your very fast answer.

THAT sounds dramatic!

I use Time Machine of course, so what about a restore of my former system? Will FileVault then also be restored?

Hans

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Answer 4

KiltedTim

Level 10

225,864 points

Feb 7, 2018 11:56 AM in response to hanyvo

File Vault is a whole disk encryption system. Restoring the files will not turn File Vault back on by itself.

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How can I access an external drive which is behind the Filevault?

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