Backing up with Filevault turned on?

OS 10.6.8—If I have Filevault turned on, what is the best way to back up the hard drive maintaining encryption on the back-up. Time Machine will not work. Do Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper do this? Can one use Filevault and Time Machine in OS 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9?
TIA,

bill501 wrote:
Can one use Filevault and Time Machine in OS 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9?
Yes. Effective with 10.7, File Vault is entirely different (it should have been given a different name). It's whole-disk encryption, and works seamlessly with Time Machine, just as it does on an unencrypted drive.
Also, effective with Lion, TM can encrypt backups made to an internal or local external HD; and with Mountain Lion, it can encrypt backups made over a network (in both cases, whether the Mac's disk is encrypted or not).
However, you should decrypt your home folder before upgrading. Note that takes a lot of space temporarily, and quite a while. (You can transfer and run "legacy" File Vault on Lion, but that has all the same downsides as before.)

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Does Yosemite boot up differently with filevault turned on

Can anyone confirm to me if having FileVault turned on causes Yosemite to boot up differently to when FileVault is turned off?
When I first set up my MacBook I enabled FileVault, and my usual boot and log in procedure consisted of; My user name and password prompt is the first thing to appear on screen, along with a blurred image on my wallpaper and a tiny Apple logo in the top left of the screen. Then once I have entered my password a progress bar appears and once its full I am logged in.
I have just turned FileVault off and ever since the restart my MacBook boots up differently. The first thing that now appears is a black background with a white Apple logo centre screen with a progress bar. Once the bar is full the image then changes to my blurred background with the user name and password prompt. Also the little white Apple logo in the top left of the screen is gone.

No.

10.6.4 with Filevault - random freeze at login

Hello,
I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing this issue:
When logging in into account on Mac running 10.6.4 with Filevault turned on, the system will randomly freeze showing beach-ball or the mouse cursor (black arrow pointer). It does not respond to any key presses any mouse clicks. Only powering off shuts off the computer. On next boot it either does the same thing or logs in the user account - again randomly.
I created multiple user accounts (both admin and limited user) with same effect when Filevault is turned on. It happens in situations when the system is loading other extensions, say Little Snitch, Menu Meters or none at all.
The freezing goes away as soon as Filevault is turned off, no matter if the OS is loading start-up items or not.
I have formatted the hard disk and did a complete re-install, Archive-Install, talked with Apple Support but the problem remains unresolved. All suggestions are greatly appreciated.
What I see in the OS's secure.log is:
10-10-28 12:00:02 PM authorizationhost[49979] Failed to authenticate user (tDirStatus: -14090).

You most likely had a corrupted system prior to upgrading. The solution is to reinstall OS X. Snow Leopard's installer will replace the current system with a new one but preserve your Home folder, third-party applications, network prefs, etc. Hopefully this will fix the problem. If it does then reinstall the 10.6.4 combo updater.

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Hold down the on/off switch and the Home button simultaneously until you see the Apple logo. Ignore the "Slide to power off" text if it appears. You will not lose any apps, data, music, movies, settings, etc.

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Can apple erase a hard drive with filevault 2 turned on and then reinstall OSX?

Can I take my MacBook Pro to an apple store and have them erase the hard drive and reinstall OSX? If so how much will that cost me?

I believe that's pretty much your only recourse if you forget the password and didn't write down the recovery key or choose to store it with Apple.
If you chose to store it with Apple, you can have them retrieve it for you if you answer the three security questions.
Really, with FileVault, the recovery key is crucial. You MUST keep a safe copy of it.
Matt

Will Mountain Lion back up to Time Machine with Filevault on and user logged in? Or do I have to log out like in previous versions of OSX?

I want to encrypt my boot drive with filevault but hate having to log out for time machine backup to work. Does Mountain Lion fix this or is this just how it's gonna be?

I want to encrypt my boot drive with filevault but hate having to log out for time machine backup to work. Does Mountain Lion fix this or is this just how it's gonna be?

Recent experience with FileVault?

Our University is coercing us to encrypt the hard drives of all laptops. The preferred method is WinMagic SecureDoc, but they'll allow us to use FileVault on our Mac laptops (as long as we turn on encrypted VM). It seems most of the FileVault information here in the Discussion is very dated, so I'm searching for current information from those who are using it. My questions are:
1) Has it worked flawlessly for you? Have you or any you know been locked out of your data because of problems with FileVault?
2) In http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8727.html (which is for Mac OS 10.5), it states:
"Because your home folder is encrypted, some tasks that normally access your home folder may be prevented. If you’re not logged in to your computer, other users won’t have access to shared folders in your home folder. Also, some automations or scripts that require data stored in you home folder may not run."
We're research scientists-- we write data analysis programs (in C and some even in FORTRAN) and shell scripts to do our work. We also use Igor Pro (wavemetrics.com), and many of the Adobe and Microsoft Office programs. Can you tell me what things _won't_ work with FileVault? I'm aware of the problems with TimeMachine, but what about other programs that are broken by FileVault?
3) Most of our Mac laptop users run their disks at around 80% full (or more). To enable FileVault there must be temporarily enough free space to contain the home directory plus the encrypted version. I imagine the solution is to use an external disk, copy the home directory to that disk, erase most of the data from the home directory on the laptop, then turn on FileVault. After it's encrypted the smaller home directory, you can copy the complete one back from the external disk. With current disk sizes, this is a hugely time-consuming process. Have you found a better way to do it? I imagine the reverse holds true if you want to turn off FileVault--you must have enough space on your laptop to hold 2 copies of your home directory. In that case would you clone the whole disk to the external drive, boot from that, then turn off FileVault, then clone it all back to your laptop drive?
Thanks in advance for any help or comments.

Sorry to bump off this topic, has anyone experienced this?

Adobe Updates Fail - with FileVault

Hi there,
I have several Adobe products (CS3, Acrobat Professional) that I'm using on my MacBook Pro that all fail to update with the following error:
"The installation process encountered a problem. Please choose from the following options:
Cancel the current update and continue installing the remaining updates.
Stop installing and continue later."
If I continue the installation, each subsequent attempt also fails.
On this particular account, I'm running FileVault. If I sign-in to another non-FileVault account, the installations continue with no problem. However, when I sign back into the FileVault account, it doesn't see the updates! Ugh.
Help!?
I'm using Mac OS 10.5.4 .
Thanks!

>Features of Open Firmware Password Protection
>When turned on using one of the PowerPC-based models listed above, Open Firmware Password Protection:
>Blocks the ability to use the "C" key to start up from an optical disc.
Blocks the ability to use the "N" key to start up from a NetBoot server.
Blocks the ability to use the "T" key to start up in Target Disk Mode (on computers that offer this feature).
Blocks the ability to start up in Verbose mode by pressing the Command-V key combination during startup.
Block the ability to start up a system in Single-user mode by pressing the Command-S key combination during startup.
Blocks a reset of Parameter RAM (PRAM) by pressing the Command-Option-P-R key combination during startup.
Requires the password to use the Startup Manager, accessed by pressing the Option key during startup (see below).
Requires the password to enter commands after starting up in Open Firmware, which is done by pressing the Command-Option-O-F key combination during startup.
Blocks the ability to start up in Safe Boot mode by pressing the Shift key during startup.
Do you REALLY want that?

On start up I get grey screen with wheel turning but it goes no further

On start up I get grey screen with wheel turning but it goes no further

Take each of these steps that you haven't already tried. Stop when the problem is resolved.
Step 1
The first step in dealing with a startup failure is to secure the data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since the last backup, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to start. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
     a. Start up from the Recovery partition, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) When the OS X Utilities screen appears, launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
b. If Step 1a fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, boot from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
c. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
d. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.
Step 2
If the startup process stops at a blank gray screen with no Apple logo or spinning "daisy wheel," then the startup volume may be full. If you had previously seen warnings of low disk space, this is almost certainly the case. You might be able to start up in safe mode even though you can't start up normally. Otherwise, start up from an external drive, or else use the technique in Step 1b, 1c, or 1d to mount the internal drive and delete some files. According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation.
Step 3
Sometimes a startup failure can be resolved by resetting the NVRAM.
Step 4
If you use a wireless keyboard, trackpad, or mouse, replace or recharge the batteries. The battery level shown in the Bluetooth menu item may not be accurate.
Step 5
If there's a built-in optical drive, a disc may be stuck in it. Follow these instructions to eject it.
Step 6
Press and hold the power button until the power shuts off. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to start up, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Use a different keyboard and/or mouse, if those devices are wired. If you can start up now, one of the devices you disconnected, or a combination of them, is causing the problem. Finding out which one is a process of elimination.
Step 7
If you've started from an external storage device, make sure that the internal startup volume is selected in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences.
Start up in safe mode. Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a Fusion Drive or a software RAID, you can’t do this. Post for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know the login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
When you start up in safe mode, it's normal to see a dark gray progress bar on a light gray background. If the progress bar gets stuck for more than a few minutes, or if the system shuts down automatically while the progress bar is displayed, the startup volume is corrupt and the drive is probably malfunctioning. In that case, go to Step 10. If you ever have another problem with the drive, replace it immediately.
If you can start and log in in safe mode, empty the Trash, and then open the Finder Info window on the startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) Check that you have at least 9 GB of available space, as shown in the window. If you don't, copy as many files as necessary to another volume (not another folder on the same volume) and delete the originals. Deletion isn't complete until you empty the Trash again. Do this until the available space is more than 9 GB. Then restart as usual (i.e., not in safe mode.)
If the startup process hangs again, the problem is likely caused by a third-party system modification that you installed. Post for further instructions.
Step 8
Launch Disk Utility in Recovery mode (see Step 1.) Select the startup volume, then run Repair Disk. If any problems are found, repeat until clear. If Disk Utility reports that the volume can't be repaired, the drive has malfunctioned and should be replaced. You might choose to tolerate one such malfunction in the life of the drive. In that case, erase the volume and restore from a backup. If the same thing ever happens again, replace the drive immediately.
This is one of the rare situations in which you should also run Repair Permissions, ignoring the false warnings it may produce. Look for the line "Permissions repair complete" at the end of the output. Then restart as usual.
Step 9
If the startup device is an aftermarket SSD, it may need a firmware update and/or a forced "garbage collection." Instructions for doing this with a Crucial-branded SSD were posted here. Some of those instructions may apply to other brands of SSD, but you should check with the vendor's tech support.
Step 10
Reinstall the OS. If the Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade.
Step 11
Do as in Step 9, but this time erase the startup volume in Disk Utility before installing. The system should automatically restart into the Setup Assistant. Follow the prompts to transfer the data from a Time Machine or other backup.
Step 12
This step applies only to models that have a logic-board ("PRAM") battery: all Mac Pro's and some others (not current models.) Both desktop and portable Macs used to have such a battery. The logic-board battery, if there is one, is separate from the main battery of a portable. A dead logic-board battery can cause a startup failure. Typically the failure will be preceded by loss of the settings for the startup disk and system clock. See the user manual for replacement instructions. You may have to take the machine to a service provider to have the battery replaced.
Step 13
If you get this far, you're probably dealing with a hardware fault. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider.

I am experiencing some major problems with my MacBook Pro. I have had some issues with it turning on/off at random times, but today, when starting, I get the grey start-up screen and a recovery bar. After filling in approx 1/4 of the way, the machine dies

I am experiencing some major problems with my MacBook Pro. I have had some issues with it turning on/off at random times, but today, when starting, I get the grey start-up screen and a recovery bar. After filling in approx 1/4 of the way, the machine dies. After starting it in recovery mode, it will not allow me to download OS X Mavericks- it says the disk is locked. Any ideas? I do not have a back-up and do not want to erase everything before I have explored my options. Help?

try forcing internet recover, hold 3 keys - command, option, r - you should see a spinning globe
most people will tell you to do both pram and smc resets (google) and if you still have issues, either clean install (easy) or troubleshoot (hard)

Mobile account with FileVault

We have a Leopard XServe 10.5.8 and a Client running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. I have just instituted via WGM the policy to create a mobile account on login and to protect the home folder with FileVault. The error I am getting is "Unable to Create mobile account" "Your FileVault home can't be created because a folder with the same name already exists" What am I doing wrong? Is this not possible? Do I need to do it is phases?

Is the user name already in use locally? If so use a different user name on the server and then login and move documents from old local account to an external drive and then re-login to new account on server and copy documents over to new server account. You might have to run the chown command on the contents of the copied over documents: sudo chown -R user /networkuser/copiedfolder and then enter the local admin password. -R is for recursive so it will do it to all files within that folder.
Now a situation that I just ran into was I already had the network account which was a mobile account, but I wanted to promote it to have the File Vault added to it. Well I enabled it within WGM, but it did not apply the settings on the computer that I was logging into. So I logged into the admin account on the computer and deleted the network user in the system preferences users pane. Then logged out and re-logged back in as the new OD File Vault encrypted account it asked me to create local account and I did and it resynced all my files from the server back to the local computer. I am running 10.6.3 OD Server and 10.5.8 clients. Hope this helps.

How can I retrieve the password hint of an external drive encrypted with FileVault 2?

Hi,
I'm running on 10.7.3, I have an external HDD that is fully encrypted with FileVault 2. When encrypting an external drive, FileVault 2 doesn't provide a recovery key, but it gives you the opportunity to give a hint at the time you enter the password. My question is: how can I get this hint?
I'm asking because I can't mount the drive anymore. I keep getting prompted to enter the password, and although I believe I'm sure what the password is, it keeps getting refused. The weird thing is that I have never been asked this password because the drive has always been automatically mounted after reboots, I guess because the password was in my Keychain. I have no idea why it no longer auto-mounts and none of the passwords I tried worked.
In Disk Utility, when I tried to "verify" the locked volume, Disk Utility logs an error in system.log with no other user visible action. I filed a bug with Apple about this (#11286871) but I'm still waiting to hear back from them. The error logged is:
Apr 20 22:53:17 nowwhat Disk Utility[1508]: -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: diskIdentifier)
Apr 20 22:53:17 nowwhat Disk Utility[1508]: (
                    0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff915bffc6 __exceptionPreprocess + 198
                    1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff87a37d5e objc_exception_throw + 43
                    2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff915bfdfa +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 106
                    3   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff915bfd84 +[NSException raise:format:] + 116
                    4   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff9157cf3b -[__NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:] + 219
                    5   DFA                                 0x000000010a1aa1b8 DFA + 25016
                    6   DFA                                 0x000000010a1ad701 DFA + 38657
                    7   DFA                                 0x000000010a1a61de DFA + 8670
                    8   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff915af75d -[NSObject performSelector:withObject:] + 61
                    9   AppKit                              0x00007fff8e507cb2 -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:] + 139
                    10 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e507be6 -[NSControl sendAction:to:] + 88
                    11 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e507b11 -[NSCell _sendActionFrom:] + 137
                    12 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e506fd4 -[NSCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:] + 2014
                    13 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e586d04 -[NSButtonCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:] + 489
                    14 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e505bde -[NSControl mouseDown:] + 786
                    15 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e4d06e0 -[NSWindow sendEvent:] + 6306
                    16 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e46916d -[NSApplication sendEvent:] + 5593
                    17 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e3ff1f2 -[NSApplication run] + 555
                    18 AppKit                              0x00007fff8e67db88 NSApplicationMain + 867
                    19 Disk Utility                        0x0000000104c4e475 Disk Utility + 9333
                    20 Disk Utility                        0x0000000104c4e270 Disk Utility + 8816

Even if you succeed with the difficult instructions to do this, if you are running Mavericks (10.9.x) on your Mac, count on it to start over with a whole new backup of your Mac, so you will have two separate backup files for the Mac on the Time Capsule.
Realistically, few of us ever need to go back months or years to retrieve a file from Time Machine. My recommendation would be to keep the external hard drive around for a few months until you have a good backup history established for the Mac....and then delete the backups from the drive and use it as a spare hard drive.

The first time I connected my new My Passport portable hard drive to my Mac, the message asking if I want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine did not appear. What is the next step?

The first time I connected my new My Passport portable hard drive to my MacBook Pro, the message asking if I want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine did not appear. I would like to set it up to do this. What would my next step be?

Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Open Time Machine preferences to select this drive for use as the backup drive. Turn on Time Machine.

My phone wouldn't back up with iCloud because it ran out of storage . I purchased more iCloud storage after a week and after doing an iTunes backup and now it won't backup with the cloud

My phone ran out of iCloud storage. After a week I did an iTunes backup then bought more iCloud storage and now it won't back up with the iCloud.

Do you have sufficient storage now? And did you turn on iCloud backup in Settings>iCloud>Storage & Backup?

Backing up with Filevault turned on?

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