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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost System
Sometimes (although Apple has largely fixed this of late) when you first turn on FileVault, your whole home directory can appear to have totally disappeared, making you think you lost everything. In every case where this has happened to me, my data was perfectly fine. The problem is that a key setting is not being set correctly -- basically, the setting tells OS X where to find your now-encrypted data.

Go to /Applications/Utilities and open the NetInfo Manager application. Select the users item in the middle column. In the next column to the right, find your username. For this example, I'll say the user's name is foobar. So, find foobar and select it. On the bottom of the window are a set of properties and values for your user account. Scroll through them to find the home_loc property. If this property is either missing or not set correctly, Mac OS won't properly mount your FileVault protected home directory, making it seem like all your data went missing.

To check the setting to make sure it is correct, first click the lock icon in the bottom left hand corner of the window (if it is not already unlocked). Assuming the home_loc property exists, click its value and make sure it is set to:
<home_dir><url>file://localhost/Users/foobar/foobar.sparseimage</url></home_dir>
Where foobar in both cases should be your username. If this is not what it is set to, or if the home_loc property doesn't exist, correct it.

Now login again as the user, and your data should all be there again, snugly inside FileVault protection.
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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost | 4 comments | Create New Account
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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost
Authored by: moofie on Dec 09, '05 09:02:33PM

That's a very helpful, although not timely, hint. This happened to me about three weeks ago, much to my dismay. I managed to recover the hard way (backing up the recovered home directory and reformatting my Powerbook's drive, and then bringing back just the preferences I needed), and ever since my Powerbook seems rather less stable.

Don't know what to make of it, but it's pretty annoying.

---
Why yes! I AM a rocket scientist!



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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost
Authored by: minDGarden on Dec 12, '05 12:12:41PM

This has just saved my Bacon, and right on time! It would have taken me a least a full day (24 hrs) to get me back to where I was.

Big Thanks!!!



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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost
Authored by: emendelson on Dec 13, '05 06:23:40AM
I haven't turned on FileVault because of worries about this kind of situation, and this hint is going to be very useful. One question: on my 10.4.3 setup, I see a home property (with the entry /Users/foobar) but no home_loc property. Are both needed, or is home enough?

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Find a home directory that File Vault may have lost
Authored by: cryptonomicon on Mar 03, '06 10:16:07PM
The home_loc setting isn't necessary unless FileVault has been turned on.

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