Erase encrypted disk

I have a couple of external firewire hard drives and I used one for an external time machine backup and now I am using another. I am finding it very dificult to delete the entire external hard drive because there is an encrypted partition. I found out that you can't use disk utility to do that and you have to use the terminal program. Using terminal I tried diskutil corestorage delete, and then when I put the name of the external hard drive it doesn't work. Any suggestions or programs to fully delete an external hard drive and delete the encrypted partition too?

I'm having a very similar problem. I had an encrypted Time Machine backup (encrypted using FileVault2 from within Time Machine). I reinstalled Lion on my computer and migrated my data using a SuperDuper backup instead of TM. When I tried to connect my TM volume, it would not mount.
I ended up completely repartitioning the external HD that the TM volume was on and if I try to create a new TM volume that is encrypted, the volume will not mount. If I just create a normal TM volume it works fine.

Similar Messages

I've tried to conduct a secure erase with disk utility. I highlight the drive but erase options are not available.

I tried to conduct a secure erase with disk utility. I highlight the drive but there's no place to click "erase."

If you have an SSD, then the best thing you can do it enable System Preferences -> Security -> FileVault, so that any deleted files are just an encrypted jumble of bits to anyone that does not have the encryption key.
And even if you do erase the SSD, it does not work the way you think, and retired SSD zones may have your data, and never see an erase.
This is way keeping the SSD encrypted means retired zones are just encrypted jumble of bits.
If you do NOT have an SSD, is it possible you are trying to erase your boot disk while you are actually using your boot disk? Disk Utility will not allow you to do that either.

Can't create encrypted disk image

With Leopard, I have repeatedly followed the instructions for using Disk Utility to make an encrypted disk. All appears to go well...all fields appropriately filled, including 128 encryption. But when I hit create, either nothing happens, or I get a second Disk Utility starting window. In any case, I am not asked to create a password, and am unable to find any trace of the disk I thought I'd just created. Would welcome your thoughts.

While creating, make sure that it's saved to the desktop so you will know where it is supposed to be, at least.. Was wondering if posssibly you lost them. Look for the named disks in your home folder and in HD on chance they are there somewhere.
I know you went to Help but just making sure you are creating disks this way (below). Everything worked fine for me--
If things still don't work, turn off DU and move to the desktop "com.apple.DiskUtility.plist" in your home folder/library/preferences. A new file will be created when disk utility is turned on again. Deleting plist files don't usually don't solve problems but sometimes they can become corrupted.
Good luck
RM
1 choose File > New > Blank Disk Image.
2 Type a name for the image, and choose where you want to save it.
3 In the Volume Name field, type a name for the volume that appears when you open the disk image.
4 Choose the size of the disk image from the Size pop-up menu.
5 Be sure you choose a size that’s large enough to hold any changes and new documents you might add.
6 Choose an encryption option from the Encryption pop-up menu.
7 Use the default settings for the rest of the options:
8 Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from the Volume Format pop-up menu.
9 Choose “Single partition - Apple Partition Map” from the Partitions pop-up menu.
10 Choose “read/write disk image” from the Format pop-up menu.
11 Click Save.
Enter a password, and click OK.
Disk Utility creates the disk image and mounts its volume on your desktop.
Copy the documents you want to protect to the volume.
If you want to erase the original documents so they can’t be recovered, drag them to the Trash and choose Finder > Secure Empty Trash.

Removing an encrypted disk image

A while ago, I created a 7gb encrypted read/write disk image and put some files in it. Now, recently, I removed the files in the encrypted disk image and copied them back into the regular HD. I erased the mounted disk image and now says it's back to 7gb.
How do I remove the disk image? It's still there in my documents folder. How do I melt it back into the HD space? I can remove it from the side bar on the disk utility page but it's still on my HD and I can still mount it to the finder. I enter my password and it mounts.
I want to get rid of that disk partition as I don't use it anymore. What do I do? Is it there forever and am I stuck with it?
Thanks in advance for anybody that can help me with this.

Niel,
You know I actually tried that before but the trash was hanging and hanging. I have it set to empty securely and I know it takes longer for secure empty but it was really long.
I'll try it again but is that normal? Does the encryption have anything to do with it?
Thanks for the help, hope this time it works.

I just bought a Intenso hard drive and its asking me to erase it before using time machine. should i erase the disk?

Hi all.
I just bought a T1B Intenso Hard Drive.
Plugged into my MacBook Pro and TimeMachine instantly pops up asking me if i want to back up.
I do, so I accept and encrypt it.
However, a message appears and asks me if I want to erase the disk (nothing is on there) to be able to continue.
Should I erase the disk?
Will it corrupt the files saved on it?
Thanks all.
±Adam±

Have you already formatted the drive using Disk Utility? If you erase the drive then, yes, you will lose all data on the drive.
If you want to use the drive as a Time Machine volume, however, you MUST format the drive as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" using Disk Utility (Applications>Utilities folder).
Good luck,
Clinton
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks 10.9.5, 16GB Crucial RAM, Crucial M500 960GB SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

Unable to create an encrypted disk image in Lion

disk utility gives the error Unable to create "Volume.dmg." (error - 60008) when creating an encrypted disk image. I am using the following steps:
    1.    Open disk utility
    2.    Select the disk (internal or external) to create the image on
    3.    Select File>New>Blank Disk Image…
    4.    Save As: 'Volume'
    5.    Name: Volume
    6.    Size: 50GB
    7.    Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    8.    Encryption: 128-bit AES encryption
    9.    Image Format: read/write disk image
    10.    Click the Create button
    11.    Password dialog appears
    12.    When I enter a password the dialog closes after entering only a few characters i.e. before I've finished typing, and the following error message displays:
Unable to create "Volume.dmg." (error - 60008)
I have previously, successfully, created encrypted disk images in Snow Leopard, and I don't know why I can't in Lion
Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for this Thomas.
I've tried naming the image differently, but still received the error, I did however try different permutations for the password.
The error seems to happen if I use a purely numerical password string and occurs on input of the 10th numerical character, if I start with numerical character but use an alpha before the 9th number I can continue and create a password, and I can create a password if I start with an alpha and switch to numerals after the first alpha character, purely alphabetical passwords are fine too.
It seems that Lion doesn't like purely numerical passwords greater than 9 characters, whereas Snow Leopard wasn't so fussy. Seems it's a bit of a bug.
Thanks for your help

Unable to create an encrypted disk image with Disk Utility

Hi:
With our upgrade to Lion a few weeks ago, we're now unable to create an encrypted disk image of any type using Disk Utility any more. This problem occurs on 3 different machines, and is reproducible whether one is using an internal HD or an external FW HD. We can successfully create nonencrypted disk images.
This is a duplicate post with all the details here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18469359#18469359
We haven't had any luck with a solution trying various permissions fixes as helpfully suggested by other readers in response to the error message # (-60008 error), so I'm hoping that someone else has run across a solution from the encrypted disk image perspective and that this tag line will generate some help.
Thank you!

Save As: 01 (on Desktop)
Name: 01
Size: 100 MB
Format: Mac OS Encrypted (Journaled)
Encryption: 256-bit AES
Partitions: Single partition- Apple Partition Map
Image Format: read/write disk image
At the password window that pops up I enter: 1234567890
This says password strength is "Weak"
All works fine
Then I repeated this using:
Save As: 02 (on Desktop)
Name: 02
Size: 100 MB
Format: Mac OS Encypted (Journaled)
Encryption: 256-bit AES
Partitions: Single partition- Apple Partition Map
Image Format: read/write disk image
At the password window that pops up I enter: 1234567890 and when I start to enter the next "1" I get the "Unable to create "02.dmg." (error -60008)
OS 10.7.4
Disk Utility Version 12.1.1 (353)

Problem using iPod as encrypted disk for G4 Backup

i have created an encrypted disk image on my iPod for backing up my G4 desktop folder. works like a charm. however, OSX limits the size of this disk image to 500MB when it is created using Disk Utility. that is unfortunate since my desktop folder is larger than that. the iPod has 14 Gigs of memory available and i would like the encrypted disk to be larger. is there any way to modify this limitation?
many thanks

In disk utility when you select "new image", it should give you the option, size, where you can select from various preset sizes or create your own custom size. Try creating the image you your local drive first then copy it to your ipod.

Using iPod as encrypted disk for G4 Backup

i have created an encrypted disk image on my iPod for backing up my G4 desktop folder. works like a charm. however, OSX limits the size of this disk image to 500MB when it is created using Disk Utility. that is unfortunate since my desktop folder is larger than that. the iPod has 14 Gigs of memory available and i would like the encrypted disk to be larger. is there any way to modify this limitation?
many thanks

i hadn't seen the "custom" item in the menu for selecting a size other than what the computer was suggesting. all better now.....

Encrypted disk image on external drive prevents that drive from ejecting

I've tested this a few different ways, and it seems to be a rather consistent problem.
I have an external USB hard drive (seagate) and on that drive I use encrypted disk images to store my data.
(because it's a portable drive, I'm nervous I'll lose it and then someone will have access to my stuff).
So anyway, whenever I mount the sparse bundle disk image, when it comes time to eject the drive (after ejecting the disk image of course), it hangs for a while and then the Finder says it can't eject, but that I can Force Eject the drive. When I chose to Force Eject, it works, but I don't like having to force it every time.
Anyone know what's up?
Thanks,
Brian.,

Open Disk Utility > File > New >Blank Disk Image...
or use the "Option-⌘-N" Key combo (with Disk Utlity open).
Kj

Create encrypted disk image with OS install disk utility.

I thought to make a full backup of Macintosh HD, and followed instructions in /kb/ht1553. However, every time I tried to creae an encrypted disk image, it barfed with "Failed - User interaction required". I assume it needed the encryption password, but for some reason was unable to display a prompt for this. Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks, Stephen.

Create an encrypted sparse disk image instead of from folder, mount it, and then drag & drop your files into ii.

Disk Utility - Create encrypted disk images super sloooow

Trying to create encrypted disk images via Disk Utility on my iMac (i7 8GB) is super-slow in 10.8. It worked quite fast in 10.7, but now it's super-slow and doesn't even seem to ever finish.
I've tried re-installing 10.8 with no difference.
Anyone else having trouble with this? Even a small dmg (~200MB) doesn't seem to work.
Unencrypted images seem to work OK (if not a little slow).
I realize that the encryption process will be slower but something is definately wrong with 10.8 disk utility in this regard. I have 1TB+ free space. I have tried with another user account as well.
My task was: (new disk image, read-write, 128bit encryption)
2012-09-03 08:59:59 -0400: Initializing…
2012-09-03 09:00:00 -0400: Creating…
2012-09-03 09:03:28 -0400: Copying… <<< seems to be stuck here...

Good morning,
Have you tried using Disk Utility from within the recovery mode? (Hold down CMD and R when booting)
I used to have this problem but creating them this way really improved the time.
Give it a go...
Rob

Creating an Encrypted Disk Image on an External (USB) Drive

I have an external 600 GB drive (2x 300 GB SATA 3.5" disks in a Thecus N2050 RAID0 external enclosure connected to iMac by USB2) onto which I would like to backup a large amount of data (500 GB).
I store this external drive away from my home (in the office) and since I cannot guarantee physically locking away the drive I would like to logically lock the drive by placing all the backup data into an encrypted disk image created on that volume.
I have tried creating an encrypted disk image on my USB volume in Disk Utility (Apple's instructions here) but I experience a number of issues not documented in the Apple article:
1) I am not presented with a drop-down option for the size of the disk image.
2) When I go ahead and try to creat the image I am told that the creation was impossible "file or folder does not exist".
Is it possible to create disk images on USB volumes (I cannot create such a large disk image on my iMac HDD as I do not have sufficient space).
thanks in advance
Raf

I realised that in Disk Utility you must not have any of your mounted drives highlighted in the left hand pane.

After 10.6 security update 2013-002 PGP encrypted disk won't boot

I ran the latest security update on my very old 17" intel MacBook Pro (It won't boot, so I can't give you the model number). It has PGP encryption installed on it, but I only have my passphrase, not the keys since it's a managed system. Half way through the install, it failed with a cryptic error, and the machine won't boot now. It gets half way through booting, and the screen goes black.
I have booted into single user mode, and ran fsck and applejack, only to get an error about a sibling error, and the hard disk is full.
Is this a PGP issue? Does the latest security update conflict with PGP?
I found this resolution to a similar sounding problem in 2010, but am unsure if this is happening now. Google searching hasn't yeilded anything so far.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20101111120329585
Thanks for any help.
Melissa

About PGP I can't tell; the hint you linked (and the suggested fix) might still be valid:
PGP recommends folks to decrypt their drives first, update to 10.6.5 and then re-encrypt.
this sounds as a general recommendation.
However fsck reported a sibling error (an invalid link sibling error I presume) and that's not fine. Afaik, Disk Utility can't fix it; DiskWarrior hopefully will. I quote from Alsoft Support Database:
Question
Is DiskWarrior capable of repairing an "Invalid Sibling Link" error?
Answer
This is an error you definitely don't want. It indicates that parts of your directory, and therefore some of your files and folders, are inaccessible.
Mac OS Standard (HFS) and Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) disk directories have a very complex structure. Each file or folder (item) on a disk has an entry in the disk's directory. These entries are in order of enclosing folder and then item name. This is similar to a yellow pages directory being ordered by type of business and then business name. Just like a yellow pages directory, the disk directory has pages except that its pages are called nodes. Unlike the yellow pages, nodes are dynamic and change as you add and delete items. It's sort of like a realtime yellow pages.
Imagine that the pages of the yellow pages are not in order and at the bottom of each page it says "Continued on page n," where n is the page that contains the next set of listings for the particular type of business that you're looking up. Well nodes are not arranged in order and each node has a reference, or link, to the next node that contains the next set of ordered items. This link is what is referred to as the sibling link.
A sibling link error is a bad link to another node. Either the link refers to the wrong node or it refers to an invalid node. As I said, a sibling link error makes some of your items inaccessible and can even prevent a disk from mounting. Sibling errors are notoriously difficult for some of the patching type of disk repair utilities to repair. Sometimes the repairs fail and the directory is damaged further. If a disk with a sibling link error is still mountable, I would advise backing up the accessible files and folders on the disk before attempting to repair it with that type of disk repair utility.
I'm not really sure DiskWarrior will work on a PGP encrypted disk. According to a few old Google matches, it should. See e.g.:
http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4263350
but according to more recent ones, it won't:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2719460?start=0&tstart=0
It seems you're out of luck even with Safe Boot (from PGP Whole Disk Encryption Command Line User's Guide):
The Mac OS X Safe Boot feature does not work on a boot disk that has been whole disk encrypted; if you hold down the Shift key to enter Safe Boot, the system will fail to boot after authenticating at the PGP BootGuard screen.
So, while you're waiting for some more knowledgeable advice, you might backup your data to an external drive while booted in single user mode. There are many how-tos out there; I think this one is pretty clear:
http://jsalovaara.com/blog/backing-up-files-to-a-usb-drive-using-single-user-mod e.html
Hope this helps.

Corrupted files within encrypted disk images

Greetings Apple Hivemind:
I've run across a repeatable problem when using encrypted disk images from Disk Utility. Essentially, I'll create an image using settings like are shown below:
The disk image is then used for storing data. In my case, this is usually data for Adobe Lightroom.
At first, this worked very well, and I housed the disk images on my household NAS, connecting via samba (smb) to it on my Mac. Over time, however, something odd started happening: Files on those encrypted images began getting corrupted whenever I tried writing new data to them.
My first incident was where Lightroom informed me that the catalog it was trying to open was corrupted. I tried to create a new one on the same encrypted volume, and it too was instantly flagged as corrupted. I opened the individual image files on the volume with no problem, so I wasn't thinking that the volume was the culprit. That is, until I tried dragging new image files to it manually. The new files were immediately either completely unreadable, or a mish-mash of the content of random OTHER files on the volume!
The result was that all old data seemed intact, but I could no longer write new data to the volumes without major data corruption issues. I thought that this was isolated to one volume in particular, but it soon started happening on ALL of my encrypted volumes eventually. Including those which were not, and never had been, housed on my NAS, but were on my local hard drives.
I've since "evacuated" all my data from these images, since the ones created by Disk Utility appear to be useless, and am seeking an alternative.
Is this something that anyone else has encountered when using encrypted disk images? It seems like this is something I should really open a support ticket for, but I can't say I've ever tried it, so I don't know how successful it would be to do so.

bbonn wrote:
I should add that I've tried using the "Repair" and "Verify" functions of Disk Utility on the volumes, and despite the obvious issues that exist in them, the utility doesn't find (or fix) any inconsistencies.
Are you repairing/verifying the actual disk images, or just the partition they're on? If the partition, it won't look inside them.
Drag one to Disk Utility's sidebar, select it, then use Verify or Repair. Note: the usual messages may not appear on the DU window. Click the Log icon in the toolbar or select Window > Show Log from the menubar to see them.

Erase encrypted disk

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