Possible recovery of a corrupted FileVault disk image
Nov 19, '07 07:30:04AM • Contributed by: redas
Nov 19, '07 07:30:04AM • Contributed by: redas
Somehow my FileVault image became corrupted, and I could not login. The following steps helped me get things working again.
First, login as the root user -- you'll need to enable root (Pre-10.5, 10.5). On your hard drive, find this file: /Users » username » username.sparseimage; it might instead be found in /Users » .username %raquo; .username.sparseimage, where username is the short username of the user with the corrupted image.
Make a copy of this fiel for back up purposes, in case something goes wrong. Of course you can try to mount it, repair permissions, etc., but I was not able to do this.
Next, reboot your machine from the DiskWarrior CD. In the DiskWarrior window (in the pop-up list), you should find the user's FileVault image; choose Rebuild on that image. After diagnostics, you should look at report. In my case, it saw all of the folder structure, but no files inside the folders. So I rebooted again, logged in as root, and then ran DataRescue II.
I switched to Expert mode and enabled 'Show Virtual (.dmg files) devices,' then selected my user.sparseimage file. I ran 'ThoroughScan' (Quick Scan gave no results). After quite some time (it takes about three to five minutes per GB), I saw a report showing many found files. I was extremely happy to see all my files (.doc, .xls, pictures, movies, etc). From the list, select files you need then choose Recover, and voila!
As the Data Rescue II is a bit costly, all things (except recovery) can be performed with a demo copy. If you are satisfied with the results in the report, you can then decide to purchase the program.
One more thing: DiskWarrior 4 is not fully compatible with Leopard. If you don't have a DiskWarrior boot disk, run all above steps on a Tiger system (with a copy of the sparseimage). Hope this helps someone!
[robg adds: We also have this older hint with some different things to try.]
First, login as the root user -- you'll need to enable root (Pre-10.5, 10.5). On your hard drive, find this file: /Users » username » username.sparseimage; it might instead be found in /Users » .username %raquo; .username.sparseimage, where username is the short username of the user with the corrupted image.
Make a copy of this fiel for back up purposes, in case something goes wrong. Of course you can try to mount it, repair permissions, etc., but I was not able to do this.
Next, reboot your machine from the DiskWarrior CD. In the DiskWarrior window (in the pop-up list), you should find the user's FileVault image; choose Rebuild on that image. After diagnostics, you should look at report. In my case, it saw all of the folder structure, but no files inside the folders. So I rebooted again, logged in as root, and then ran DataRescue II.
I switched to Expert mode and enabled 'Show Virtual (.dmg files) devices,' then selected my user.sparseimage file. I ran 'ThoroughScan' (Quick Scan gave no results). After quite some time (it takes about three to five minutes per GB), I saw a report showing many found files. I was extremely happy to see all my files (.doc, .xls, pictures, movies, etc). From the list, select files you need then choose Recover, and voila!
As the Data Rescue II is a bit costly, all things (except recovery) can be performed with a demo copy. If you are satisfied with the results in the report, you can then decide to purchase the program.
One more thing: DiskWarrior 4 is not fully compatible with Leopard. If you don't have a DiskWarrior boot disk, run all above steps on a Tiger system (with a copy of the sparseimage). Hope this helps someone!
[robg adds: We also have this older hint with some different things to try.]
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