Mac mini hard drive recovery w/ encrypted partition

data-recoveryencryptionhard drivepartition

My Mac mini failed recently, and after taking it to the Apple store, they said it was the logic board that failed, and it would be $350ish to replace, which was not worth it to me, so I took it back.

I want to recover the data off of the hard drive. I have the drive removed from the computer, and plugged into my laptop running Ubuntu 15.04/Windows 7 (dual boot) via USB3.

I have two partitions on the hard drive:

  • My Macintosh HD Partition, and
  • An encrypted partition with some sensitive documents

How can I mount this encrypted partition on my laptop (using Ubuntu or Windows, idc), and get the data off of it (I know the password that it was encrypted with)?

Best Answer

You have two problems: FileVault whole disk encryption and the HFS+ filesystem. HFS+ is not difficult to deal with in Ubuntu, but I've seen no readily accessible tools to access a FileVault encrypted volume even when you know the password.

It'll be far easier to use a Mac to turn off FileVault. Disk Utility can unlock and decrypt the drive. The folks at the Apple Store might let you use one of the computers in the store to decrypt the drive, otherwise you might have to borrow a friends Mac for a while. It'd be best to use the same version of OS X or newer.