Fix Your Stuff Community Store

Repair guides and disassembly information for Apple's Macintosh personal computers.

42799 Questions View all

Options

How do I clone a filevault 2 encrypted drive without the password?

I'm working on a repair/upgrade for a friend, and part of that is moving their data from a hd to an ssd. I don't have their password, but it seems like I should be able to block copy the data from the old hd to the new ssd without decrypting it first. Is this possible? I have tried carbon copy cloner and super duper, but neither of those will even touch an encrypted drive. Disk utility sees the drive, but when I start the restore, the progress message says "copying (null) from (null)" and I get 'Source volume on device "/dev/disk4" is not valid for restoring' and 'Could not validate source - error 254'.

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Yes No
Score 0
Add a comment

1 Answer

Filter by:
Most Helpful Newest Oldest
Chosen Solution

Options

Sorry it can't be done!

The issue here is how the encrypted drive is setup. The drives built-in ID is used as one of the keys to prevent you from making a clone copy as the copy won't be readable without the drives native key. Apple did their homework making sure the encrypted drives are secure.

You'll need to have your friend to unlock the drive to allow you to do a migration using the Migration Assistant app.

Find the nearest trash can to throw away your old cloner apps! They more often than not mess up the drive or create other problems. I got rid of them five years ago and haven't needed them. This will be more important with the next MacOS release which intro's a new file system (you can play with it under Sierra - Beta).

Focus on using Apples built in cloning option in Disk Utility or use TimeMachine for backups. When you replace a drive use the built-in access to Migration Assistant during the OS install for the new drive it is very powerful! If you want to do it later just access it within the Apps folder.

Was this answer helpful?

Yes No
Score 4
Add a comment

Add your answer

Sterling Hirsh will be eternally grateful.
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 0

Past 7 Days: 4

Past 30 Days: 21

All Time: 4,231