Hi everyone,
I recently formatted an external HDD that was previously formatted as HFS+ and had FileVault enabled. I erased it using Disk Utility and reformatted it, but now I’m wondering if there’s any way to recover the old data that was on it.
The drive was encrypted before I formatted it. I don’t have a backup of the files.
Is data recovery still possible in this situation, or does FileVault make it unrecoverable after formatting?
If the drive had FileVault enabled and you erased it using Disk Utility, your chances are extremely low.
FileVault encrypts the entire volume. That means all the data stored on the drive was encrypted with a key. Once you erase and reformat the drive, the encryption metadata and key structure are removed.
Without the original encryption key and intact file system structure, recovery tools can’t make sense of the raw data blocks — even if some data technically still exists underneath.
As it was a traditional spinning HDD, recovery might be theoretically possible in very limited scenarios — but with FileVault involved and a full format performed, it’s not realistic.
If the data was important, your only real hope would have been a backup or having kept the original encrypted volume untouched.
It is almost impossible to recover data on the formatted HDD with FileVault enabled. If the files on the HDD are vital for you indeed, you can give the data recovery tool a try.
Data recovery tools like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac support recovering files from HDD, at a certain recovery rate, depending on your situation.