MacOS – Mac drive not showing up on resetpassword screen

macospasswordrecoverysingle-user

I am trying to reset my admin password using recovery partition. When I type resetpassword in terminal, a window shows up but I don't see my drive in the top box.

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Is there a way to fix this? btw, I tried booting into single user mode, but it goes straight to the login page.

EDIT:

I may know why the drive doesn't show up. I checked Disk Utility and saw that the drive is locked. But I need a password to unlock it, which I don't have!

Best Answer

The drive is locked using FileVault encryption and cannot be accessed until you unlock the drive. This may be set to a master password of yours, and often is set a while back. You may want to try older passwords (or versions of them) to see if any of those work.

To unlock the drive:

  1. Boot into the recovery mode
  2. Launch Disk Utility
  3. Select the drive in disk utility
  4. Click unlock near the top of the disk utility window

Unfortunately, the drive will not allow you to boot into those options and/or work on it until you pass the encryption lock. It will require a password or for you to completely erase the drive.

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