Critical Alert warning - Failed to unlock folder

[SeanD]

Hi!

I recently purchased a new Mac. I have a secure folder on an external drive.  Prior to moving to the new Mac I looked up how to transfer the drive to the new Mac and understood that I needed to copy the folder Library->Application Support->com.taoeffect.Espionage3 to the same location on the new computer.  I did this and managed to successfully unlock the folder.  Everything looked good, so I reformatted the drive on the old computer. 

NOT the drive that the secure folder was on, just the main HDD on the old Mac.

Yesterday I updated my version of OS X to 10.11.4 beta 2, which may have been a mistake.  When I tried to unlock the folder today I get an error saying the file "F7355OF3-2B6E-473F-92EF-D31AA4EAAD12.sparebundle" could not be opened because there is no such file.  It should be here:  /volumes/LaCie/F7355OF3-2B6E-473F-92EF-D31AA4EAAD12.sparebundle

But here is the kicker.  I didn't make any changes to the LaCie drive, so if that file ever existed on /volumes/LaCie, it should still reside there now.  I also copied that folder com.taoeffect.Espionage3 to a thumb drive and looking there and in my folder in Application Support, the contents are identical.

Which is to say a folder called Backups with several backups; a folder called Data with 5 sparse bundle files, none of them with the name Espionage is looking for and a Temp folder with for sub-folders called _Rescued Items, Rescued Items_1, etc. Also in the root are Exec files database3 and license.

I tried downloading iVisable as was suggested in some other threads and looking for a hidden file of interest.  But nothing.  Not in the com.taoffect.Espionage3 folder or the LaCie drive.

Any help in recovering would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[zsolt]

Hello Sean, Espionage is protecting data by copying the data into encrypted disk images. The name of the disk image is randomly generated. The location of the disk image is determined in two ways: if you are protecting a folder which resides on your boot disk, then we will assume that the folder layout is standard OS X and will expect that there is a Library/Application Support present, so we create there our com.taoeffect.Espionage3 folder, and inside of it a Data subfolder and we put all the disk images there without asking you anything. However, if you are protecting a folder which is on an external drive, then we will assume that you do not want to put the disk image on your boot disk, but instead onto that external disk, but as we do not know the folder structure there, we will ask you where do you want to save it.

That being said, I suppose you were protecting a folder which was on your LaCie drive and when asked where to save it, you choose the root folder of the LaCie drive.
I assume you were using this folder before migration and it worked fine.

Now you say: "understood that I needed to copy the folder Library->Application Support->com.taoeffect.Espionage3 to the same location on the new computer.  I did this and managed to successfully unlock the folder.  Everything looked good,"

so did you try to unlock that folder which was on LaCie drive or not?

The problem is very simple to describe: in Espionage database, the folder you are trying to unlock has a recorded reference to the disk image /volumes/LaCie/F7355OF3-2B6E-473F-92EF-D31AA4EAAD12.sparebundle
If the disk image was moved, Espionage lost the reference, but this is easy to fix as long as you can find this disk image somewhere else.
If the disk image does not exist any more, then there is nothing Espionage can do.

Whether you modified the LaCie drive or not, I cannot tell, it is just a fact that the disk image was there once, and not it is not.

So as long as you can locate the disk image, we can fix this.

Rgds
Zsolt

[SeanD]

Thank you for the reply.

In answer to the question "So did you try to unlock the folder which was on the LaCie drive or not?"  The answer is yes.  I move the drive from the old computer on Sunday.  I copied the contents of Application Support_>com.taoeffect.Espionage3 to the new computer;  Installed Espionage and my license; tested the drive and was able to open and view the contents of the protected drive.  I though everything was then good, so I formatted the drive of the old computer for sale.

Yesterday I updated the OS of the new computer to OS X 10.11.4 beta 2 and sometime after that, tried to open the folder on the external drive once again.  It is at this point that I got the error in opening it.   Nothing else was done to the external drive, so I am not sure I can understand where the disc image may have gone?

Thanks

[zsolt]

OK; but you understand that formatting the drive on the old computer and upgrading the OS on the new computer has absolutely nothing to do with the data sitting on the LaCie disk. Because the only problem we have here is the missing sparse bundle disk image on the LaCie disk. I also have no idea where it could have gone, but as long as it is listed in Espionage as folder, Espionage was not manipulating i.e. deleting it for sure. The only scenario in which Espionage will delete the disk image is either when you force remove the folder from the database, in which case Espionage will ask you where to save the disk image, or if you decrypt the folder, in which case Espionage will not delete the disk image as long as the decryption did not complete successfully....

Zsolt

[SeanD]

OK; but you understand that formatting the drive on the old computer and upgrading the OS on the new computer has absolutely nothing to do with the data sitting on the LaCie disk.

I understand, but I am saying that those are the only two actions that I took after removing the drive from one computer and verifying that the protected folder would open on the other.  Nothing was done to the LaCie drive, other than physically moving it from one to the other.

I am puzzled, because it opened fine prior to the OS X upgrade, and then it would not afterward. I was worried that perhaps the beta OS X was not fully compatible or that it somehow caused Espionage to loose the association.

Because the only problem we have here is the missing sparse bundle disk image on the LaCie disk. I also have no idea where it could have gone, but as long as it is listed in Espionage as folder, Espionage was not manipulating i.e. deleting it for sure.

That is where I am puzzled.  There is no sparse bundle disk image on the LaCie disk. I have tried a couple of different undelete programs to see if there is one that was somehow deleted, but I can't recall their ever being one, nor does their seem to be one  deleted. 

I DO have the com.taoeffect.Espionage3 folder, which has a subfolder called Data and that contains 5 sparse bundle disk images, but none with the name Espionage is looking for.

The only scenario in which Espionage will delete the disk image is either when you force remove the folder from the database, in which case Espionage will ask you where to save the disk image, or if you decrypt the folder, in which case Espionage will not delete the disk image as long as the decryption did not complete successfully....

Zsolt

I haven't done either of those, which is why I am puzzled.  Again, I only mention that I upgraded the OS X version on the new computer, because that is literally the only thing I did do between Monday, when it did open just fine and Tuesday when it did not.

Puzzled.

- Sean