Unprotect folder on hard-disk partiton after clean Install

[JonesEspi]

Hello folks,

maybe the problem I have is already covered anywhere but I could'nt find it ...

I have a Mac Pro (Mid 2012) with four hard-disks installed. It slowed so extremely down that I decided to do a Clean System install. That means all apps have to be reinstalled etc.
I had an Espionage encrypted folder on one of the hard-disks (not the system-disk). Fortunately before the clean install I did a copy of the really important files inside of the encrypted folder  :) But not of all the files because I was convinced that I will have access again after installing Espionage (Version 3.6.5) back on my startup disk.
Well the folder on the disk is still there and I can open it and off course: it is empty. I tried to follow some of the advices which I found here in the forum but I didn't manage to unprotect the folder again.
The clean install is of OS X 10.11.6 as was before the install. I have the sparsebundles in a backup ... but no help if I copy them to the startup disk. The protected folder does not show up in Espionage.

So hopefully someone can give me help or advices how I will be able to unlock my folder.

Thanks for you assist  :)

Johannes

[zsolt]

Hello Johannes, for Espionage to work, it needs three pieces of information:
- the Espionage database which contains the disk image passwords and relation between the protected folder and the disk image
- the disk image which contains the data
- the mountpoint folder which is just an empty folder but in predefined location and with predefined name

If you have the disk image and the mount point folders, they both sitting on your external drive, what you are missing is the Espionage database

Now that you ran Espionage new on the new system, you set it up from scratch, but it is not aware of your previously protected folders. So you have to replace the current installation data with the one before reinstallation.

All you have to do is find the /Users/[your username]/Library/Application Support/com.taoeffect.Espionage3
folder on your backup disk and replace with it the current folder.

Before doing that, please quit espionage.

Once you replaced the folder, when you launch Espionage the folders should be there.

give it a try and let me know if anything unclear,

Rgds
Zsolt

[JonesEspi]

Hello Zsolt,
first: thanks a lot for your help!

I followed your instructions and my folder is back in Espionage  :) this is super. But when I try to unlock it, unfortunately this does'nt work. Espionage says that it can't reach the Disk-Image. Further it says: The file «a lot of numbers and letters.sparsebundle» could not be opened because it does not exist. It should be here /Users/Jones/Documents/«a lot of numbers and letters.sparsebundle»

The only idea I have is: when I sat up the new system I decided for another user-name. Instead of «Jones» now I use «Hannes». Could this be the problem and can I solve it?

Again thanks a lot for your help!

Best regards

Johannes

[zsolt]

Hello Johannes, yes, if the paths are changed, Espionage cannot find the data, but this is easy to fix as long as you have the data, just click onto small "i" near the folder name, and use the disk image drop down menu (note the disk image name first) to point espionage to the new folder where the disk image sits, after that it should start to work

Let me know how it  went,

Zsolt

[JonesEspi]

Hello Zsolt,

I tried to follow your advice. The strange thing is, that I can't find a disk image (sparsebundle) with the requested name. Where should it resist? I can only find sparsebundles in the «com.taoeffect.Espionage3» folder in Application Support. But there are only ones with different names?!

Thanks again for your support!

Johannes

[zsolt]

Hello Johannes, you mentioned that you protected the folders on the external disk, this means when encrypting, Espionage asked you where to save the disk image (it does not ask if you protect a folder on your system disk).

Those disk images you see in espoinage library folder are probably the fake disk images we created during setup.

So you have to locate the disk images you saved somewhere on the external disk...but judging from the error message, it seems that espionage expects the in /Users/Jones/Documents/, which means that you selected your documents folder on the internal disk as location of the disk image. So if you wiped your system disk and have no backups then the data is gone. if you have a backup of your documents folder, then you should restore it from there.

I hope there will be a happy end,

Rgds
Zsolt

[JonesEspi]

Hello Zsolt,

I found the disk-image on my backup. So far so good :) then I copied it to my new «documents» on the startup disk and located it there within Espionage. Now Espionage starts to open the image but there comes a warning that the opening failed :(
In the Menu the mount point is set with the folder I want to open and the disk image path is now set to the sparsebundle that I copied from my backup to «documents».

This should work – or? Or should I copy the sparsebundle to another place on my Mac?

Thanks again for your continuing support!

Johannes

[zsolt]

Hello Johannes, would a remote session suite you, then we can take a look into this together. I'm GMT+2 and should be available at 9:45 PM my time i.e. in 3.5 hours, if you can and wish to do it, let me know and we connect.

Cheers
Zsolt

[JonesEspi]

Hello Zsolt,

yes this is a good idea. The only thing is that I'm invited at my neighbours today and I'm not sure how long it will last ... I'm GMT+2 to, and I think that maybe it will last up to 10:00 PM. If it's o.k. after 10:00 PM then we can try today otherwise we can make an appointment for Monday because I will be on a weekend-trip from tomorrow ...

Thanks again and

best regards

Johannes

[JonesEspi]

Hello Zsolt,

I just want to give you the information that I finally managed to open my encrypted folder  :D  :D  :D
I decided to delete the whole thing, because it seems impossible to open it. But before I did I forced Espionage to remove the folder from the database ... And this was the solution: Espionage created a password protected Image-Bundle which I could easily open. And inside where the files I was looking for! Now I can start up from scratch and create a new folder for protection etc.

So for now again thanks a lot for your help.

Best regards

Johannes

[zsolt]

Hello Johannes, it is not entirely clear to me how could it put the disk image onto desktop if it complained a second before that it cannot reach it...but the most important thing is that the data is back. In a remote session I could probably explain what happened, but now we leave it as it is.

I'm glad you did not loose confidence in Espionage, I assume it was not an application problem, but then again, you never know.

If you have any doubts, please test with some noncritical data and proceed only after you are sure that it works as you expect it.

Thanks for your feedback

Zsolt