Awake

How I Defeated a Corrupt FileVault and Saved Thousands of Innocent Files

So how did you spend your Christmas vacation? I spent part of it saving my Powerbook from the clutches of "Vile Vault."

FileVault (aka "Vile Vault") is a "security feature" on OS X that encrypts a user's data into a single encrypted disk image file called "username.sparseimage." The feature is off by default and I decided to turn it on just in case my laptop ever got stolen. (I was about to go on a trip to India at the time.)

I've used it for about a year now with no trouble. That is, until Christmas Eve "Eve." My applications stopped opening, so I decided to restart. Apparently that was a mistake. When I tried to log back in, I got a message stating that I couldn't be logged in at this time. I tried resetting the password. No dice.

Irony of ironies, I discovered that this message is actually a "feature" of 10.4.6. Unbelievable. I was prevented from logging into my supposedly corrupted FileVault (user account) because I have the latest version of OS X installed. Again I say: "Unbelievable."

My conclusion? Revert to a previous version. I couldn't locate my Tiger disks, but I did find my Powerbook Software Restore disks that had Panther (10.3.5) on it. So after fixing permissions, repairing the disk, running every program on Disk Warrior (no dice!) and playing a lot of Scrabble, I did an "Archive and Install" and voila! Access granted.

Granted, the old bird was crippled for certain. I hobbled around, nearly hypmotized by the Everlasting Rainbow Spinning Beachball of Please Wait Land, salvaging all my photos, music, web sites, documents, copying them onto an external FireWire drive (or two). There were a few files that I was unable to copy for reasons beyond my understanding, but I had them backed up in other places. (I am so grateful I got an iPod Nano for my birthday and had already saved my music!) Once I was satisfied that I had backed everything I wanted to keep, I installed OS 10.3 again, this time performing an "Erase and Install." The computer was just like new. Literally.

So now, I'll find my Tiger discs and do another clean install and restore all my apps, photos, and music. And I'll never ever ever turn on FileVault again.

Why did FileVault go to the Dark Side in the end? My theory is video editing. 95% of the time, whenever I edit videos in Final Cut, I use an external drive as my scratch disk. A time or two (recently) I got lazy and edited them on the Powerbook's hard drive. With FileVault turned on, hard drive space gets rapidly sucked away when editing videos, but "luckily" when I would restart, it would recover the lost disc space. I think the practice of saving video content on my FileVault eventually corrupted it. I can't prove this; it's just a theory.

Lessons learned:

1. Schedule regular backups
2. Don't turn on FileVault
3. Be smart about locations of Final Cut Pro scratch disks (don't use a hard drive with an OS installed on it)

Happy New Year.