Is it possible to access an external HDD or USB drive encrypted on Lion, through a Mac running Leopard?
In other words, is FileVault 2 encryption on volumes/partitions backwards compatible? (It really should be.)
Open an encrypted HDD/USB on Leopard
encryptionfile-transferfilevaulthard drive
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Best Answer
No - OS X older than Lion cannot read or comprehend/mount/use a Core Storage volume such as used with FileVault 2.
Someone could reverse engineer the protocol and write drivers for older OS or different OS, but I haven't even seen a start towards that effort in any open source project.