I created an encrypted disk on a USB drive the other day, and added a password hint. I don't remember what the password is. (I have a scheme for mapping hints to passwords, so when there's a hint available I just pick something random and write out the appropriate hint.)
When reconnecting the disk today, OS X popped up the password prompt - but no hint displayed.
When I go into Disk Utility and try to mount the volume, same thing. Not even a button to show the hint!
So now I've got no idea what the password is. How do I find out the hint?
OS X 10.12.6 (16G29)
Here's the process I went through. (I went through it again using a spare SD card and took screen grabs at each point.)
- From Disk Utility, select disk in question and go to the Erase option. Select
Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
- The password box appears. Enter password and add a hint.
(I usually pick a more cryptic hint than that)
- Click
Choose
, then clickErase
, and it will do its thing. ClickDone
once it's done, and quit Disk Utility.
Eject the newly-mounted encrypted disk image from Finder, then unplug USB hard drive.
Reinsert USB hard drive and wait for password dialog to appear.
But where's the hint?!
Show Hint
button, that you could click to get the hint.diskutil
has no obvious options for password hint when you're encrypting a disk. So I wonder what Disk Utility actually even does with the text you enter. Will look through the programming docs later and see if I can find any more clues...