09-26-2010, 12:39 AM

My daughter is running OSX 4.11 (on a G4 iBook) and she is having a issue trying to decrypt her Home Folder. Every time she tries to do this task, she gets a dialog box that states there was a 'Error' in the decrypt and that Filevault will remain ON. Her iBook then restarts. The reason she was trying to decrypt her Home Folder is because one of her classmates told her the reason her backup's (especially iTunes) freezes is because of Filevault. Not sure if this true? She tends to believe it may be since she never had backup issues prior to turning on Filevault. Is there a way we can decrypt the Home Folder? Hopefully if there is way to do this this, she won't have system issues after the fact.

I've been using Mac's since late 2001 (Jaguar) and never turned on Filevault because I knew people said to stay away from it. Had I known she was going to do this, I would have told her no!

If anyone has a answer, we would both appreciate your efforts.

Thanks just the same,
Mad_Man

09-26-2010, 01:18 AM

My advice is if you havnt got secret squirrel stuff to hide from the outside world STAY AWAY from it all together... I have been in your situation and if you read this thread Peoples take on file vault and see what had to do. It would be very long winded to rewrite so read it and particularly the last couple of posts for my solutions .... Any particular questions post back and to see how you went ... Hope it helps

Cheers

09-26-2010, 02:16 AM

I think my headache just intensified.

She has 32.8GB available on the internal HD (23.4Gb used). She also has 61.34GB available on her OWC On-The-Go (80GB) ext HD.

She is getting the; "error msg : cant complete operation ... FV will not be turned off." - as you did. Nothing about (lack of) disk space.

I'm confused -- I was under the assumption her encrypted Home Folder is on the internal HD? Is that correct? She claims not being able to do a Home Folder backup since turning FV on, so I have to believe there's nothing (as in encrypted files / folders on her ext HD?

Did I mention I was confused? Not sure what to do here? I'm almost to the point of telling her - live with it, but I feel for her because she is concerned about doing her routine back-up's. She has had to force quit her iBook three times ( I witnessed) due to backup's (Home Folder and iTunes) freezing. At least it appeared as if they were freezing?

Anyway, thanks just the same for your reply.

09-26-2010, 06:56 AM

Here is something I would try in her shoes.

1. Manually copy (via drag and drop) everything in the user folder to the external drive.
(maybe not "everything" - but at least the Documents, Music, Video folders - this should free up enough space)
2. Verify that everything copied correctly. Not just by comparing the two folders side by side, but, by opening a sampling of the files that have been copied over (I always sample maybe 20 or so files at random - if everything is good, then I keep my fingers crossed that all is good - always has been for me).
3. Delete (from the internal drive home folder) those documents, music, etc. that you have copied over to the external (and empty the trash).
4. Then try turning off FV.
5. Warn her not to turn it on again.

edit: If there are network issues with it dropping out and getting error messages during file transfer, I might would try copying maybe 20-100 files at a time instead of the entire folders. Yes, I know - time consuming and a pitr.

09-26-2010, 09:08 AM

Everyone NOT working for national security, TURN OFF FILEVAULT. There.

09-26-2010, 10:17 AM

bobtomay - She has Full Backup's along with incremental backups on the ext HD. Fwiw, iTunes, iPhoto, and her documents are the critical folders / files as fas as she is concerned -- Could these files simply be trashed and then recovered from her ext HD? Or would that be another mistake? If the latter, then we'll have to try your method. - Thanks.

chas - If only it were that simple.

09-26-2010, 10:34 AM

Should be safe deleting anything that she already has backed up.

These back ups were made prior to turning on FV? I have no idea what all the ramifications may be if FV was turned on and she was using Time Macine or one of the cloning apps to back up.

09-26-2010, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by bobtomay

Should be safe deleting anything that she already has backed up.

These back ups were made prior to turning on FV? I have no idea what all the ramifications may be if FV was turned and she was using Time Macine or one of the cloning apps to back up.

Yes, as for backups prior to FV. She is running Tiger, she doesn't have Time Machine. She utilizes Apple's Backup 3 into her ext HD (as well as iDisk for some files mind you not iPhoto, iMusic or her Doc folder). She has a MobileMe account.

As I understand it, she hadn't attempted any backup's after turning FV on, that is until yesterday. -Thanks.