Recovering FileVault Image on Crashed HD

Thanks in advance for any help.

iBook G4, OS X 10.4.? (10.4.11 I think)

My iBook will not start. It loads with a flashing ? and eventually reaches the grey apple screen with pinwheel. I can hear it trying to read the hard drive but it ultimately gives up and shuts down.

Disk utility could not verify or repair permissions. I don't remember the error message exactly but it was pretty vague, something like "The repair failed due to an error." Attempted verify and repair drive with same results, and on subsequent tries those options were greyed out entirely.

The hardware check suggested that the hard drive and other components are functioning properly.

Disk Warrior could not rebuild/replace the directory due to a disk malfunction.

I have a 20 gb File Vault "sparseimage" that contains data created since the last backup. Disk Warrior found it and I tried to rebuild it, but I got an error message after entering the password. The image also appeared in the preview of the attempted Macintosh HD rebuild, and DW advised me to backup data from the preview. But my largest USB drive is only 8 gb, and it did not appear as a possible location for copying files anyway.

So, is there any way to mount or unlock the File Vault through Disk Warrior or another utility so I can recover files from in there? Other threads I found online suggested logging in through another account, but I can't reach the point where I log in at all. The only other relevant discussions/sites I found dealt with corrupted file vaults, but in my case the entire hard drive seems to have failed (although files and folders all seemed to be accounted for in the Diskwarrior preview, both "original" and "preview").

Also, if I were to purchase an external HD, do you think it will be possible to download the File Vault image using DW and then decrypt it somehow (perhaps even by installing OS X to that hard drive)? DW did not find the flash drive for copying, so it would not have been possible to copy even smaller, non-encrypted files. Would an external hard drive have better luck?


I know it's a long post, thanks for reading. I greatly appreciate any input.

File Vault is and always has been a bad idea for non-CIA/NSA-level users. And you are in the process of finding out why.

I think your only hope is to use an external drive (with an installed, bootable system on it) to try and decrypt the FV image using the external's own FV control panel. Otherwise, I'd say you're borked.

The original HD is pretty clearly toast, judging by your report with DW.

I agree with chas that would be your best bet.

Along with:

dkmajw said:

...
if I were to purchase an external HD,...

Click to expand...

If?

I know this doesn't help your situation at present and I apologize for that. This is more for the benefit of others that may be reading this thread.

The real question here is, with the price of external drives today, why don't you already have one with your data backed up onto it? (Especially if the data was important enough that you felt the need to have it encrypted.)

Thanks for your help guys. I wasn't sure if paying for a new hard drive would have the highest chance of success versus say some kind of data recovery software, or any other methods I hadn't considered.

bobtomay said:

The real question here is, with the price of external drives today, why don't you already have one with your data backed up onto it? (Especially if the data was important enough that you felt the need to have it encrypted.)

Click to expand...

I make redundant copies of my data on CD's and USB drives. 99% of my data is safe and sound, but the remaining 1% that was made since the last backup is important enough to try to save.


And yes, I am seeing the problems with File Vault as well as reading about them online. Among many others, one of the mistakes I made was encrypting the entire home folder instead of just the important files. The photos of my cats or my iTunes library didn't need to be in an encrypted archive, and those few things that did probably would have fit in a small enough archive that I could transfer to a USB rather than needing 20 gb. Plus if even the tiniest bit of that is corrpted then the whole thing may be lost at once whereas mutiple small files might be at least partially salvageable.


It could be a while, but I will write back about how it went in case it may be helpful to others with this problem. Thanks again to both of you for the help!