[madhusoodanan70]

Have a 20 GB sparseimage file that I backed up when my passwords were not working and the genius bar fella was not able to recover the data. Any way to decrypt it and get the data out? Diskwarrior also was not helpful.

HELP PLEEEESE...

[turtle777]

I think the short answer is no.

If you don't know the password, brute force is your only viable option.

-t

[Big Mac]

File Vault should never have made it as a general OS feature.

[TETENAL]

FileVault sucks, but that's not an excuse for not having backups.

[JKT]

Do you two (Big Mac, Tetenal) even use FileVault? I can only assume not given the truly idiotic nature of your comments.

[Maflynn]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

File Vault should never have made it as a general OS feature.

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

FileVault sucks, but that's not an excuse for not having backups.

Originally Posted by JKT 

Do you two (Big Mac, Tetenal) even use FileVault? I can only assume not given the truly idiotic nature of your comments.

Actually both of them speak wisely. Its better to use an encrypted disk image then file vault. The risk of losing your entire home folder because of a minor file corruption is too great for most general users - it causes more problems then it solves. If I worked at the CIA or something well that would be different.

Just do a search here or google and you'll find tons of people who had too many problems with FV to make it a viable solution to keep your data safe.

[turtle777]

Espionage, FTW.

Encrypt only what's really sensitive. Not your whole home folder.

-t

[Peter]

I administer 120 Macs. All filevaulted.
I have never had any issues with Filevaulting. Nor have I read any "horror" stories on Mac OS X / Mac Enterprise mailing lists.

Espionage is cool, but using that to encrypt your email or your desktop is a logistical nightmare.

My only beef with FV is that it borks Time Machine.

[madhusoodanan70]

Thanks a lot for all the respones folks. Turtle, what brute force method do you suggest?

Looks like CIA may be able to make good bucks if they get into the service business. Would have been nice to have friendship with an agent indeed (just dreamin).

[madhusoodanan70]

What actually happened was once I saw the service providers name in the servers list instead of my home network folder name there. A second time I noticed the name of a different computer in my network server list instead of mine. I logged out and when I tried to log back in, my filevault would not allow me to do it. Although I tried the correct master password, this also did not work. Eventually, I just backed up the sparseimage hoping that some day, someone will come up with a method to decrypt it and get the data out.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by madhusoodanan70 

Turtle, what brute force method do you suggest? .

I'm not sure if this will help.

http://www.macforensicslab.com/Produ...c83908916532cb

Basically, brute force just means that you'd try (either manually or with software) to guess the password.

This WILL take a long time, and you will need a lot of computing power to be successful.

-t

[TETENAL]

If you know for a fact that the passward and the master password are correct, then the FileVault sparseimage is probably corrupted. Brute force guessing the password does not help. You already know it.

There is probably nothing you can do to recover your data. Maybe a professional data recovery service could do something. It would be best (and cheapest) to simply restore your data from your backup.

[Doc Juansinn]

There's a thread at Apple Discussions in which a guy recovered data from his corrupted sparseimage. May or may not work for you, but perhaps it's worth a try.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....readID=1200247

[JKT]

Originally Posted by Maflynn 

Actually both of them speak wisely. Its better to use an encrypted disk image then file vault. The risk of losing your entire home folder because of a minor file corruption is too great for most general users - it causes more problems then it solves. If I worked at the CIA or something well that would be different.

Just do a search here or google and you'll find tons of people who had too many problems with FV to make it a viable solution to keep your data safe.

An encrypted disk image is worthless if it doesn't encrypt all the temporary files that get created too. Such as those in your user Library folder. Oh, guess what? It can't do that. So no, an encrypted disk image is not a viable solution to use in place of an encrypted home folder and encrypted RAM.

The risk of losing your entire home folder because of minor file corruption is minimal if you have a rigourous back-up strategy for your data. And if you use something like FileVault (on whatever platform) then you are a fricking idiot if you don't have a rigourous back-up strategy because, alas, it does increase the risk of catastrophic data loss. However, that risk is far outweighed by the practical benefit it brings of securing your data.

[madhusoodanan70]

What I have is an encrypted home folder. What is weird with an encrypted home folder?

[wadesworld]

I've been using FileVault for more than 6 months. No problems whatsoever.