The University of Texas at Austin

Enterprise Whole Disk Encryption

Self-encrypting Drive Recovery - Mac

You will need:

Create a bootable recovery tool from the DMG file

  1. From any Mac O/S device, open Terminal and run the following commands:
    diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1 where "disk1" refers to the target USB media. To verify which disk is the target USB media run the "mount" command in terminal to list current disks.

  2. Run the following command:
    dd if=sdemgdsk.dmg of=/dev/disk1 where “if” is the path to the image file

  3. When the process completes successfully there will be two partitions on the USB media, one hidden and one visible (SDFAT). Copy the exported Hardware Encryption Data (DBK and ENC files) to the root of the SDFAT partition.

  4. Insert the USB media into the Mac device to be recovered and power it on.

  5. Hold the Option (Alt) key when the Mac posts and select recovery USB media as the boot device.

  6. Type "Yes" to run the SecureDoc Recovery tool

The following information will be displayed:

Print SED device info
Device Model: XXXX
Drive serial number: XXXX
Drive firmware Revision: XXXX
Drive Flags/state: indicate status of the drive

Note: Regarding status of the drive, 0x0/0x0 indicates factory default, i.e. not managed, and 0x1/0x101 indicates encrypted and locked.

Before proceeding, be sure that the option chosen is appropriate for the desired purpose:

  • Type "t" to Decrypt the SED device. The FDE card will be removed, unlocking the drive and providing unrestricted access to its contents.

    Note: This command does not delete data and does not uninstall SecureDoc . Data may be recovered from the drive and then a new image applied.

  • Type "z" to Crypto-erase the SED device. The drive will be returned to its factory state. All data will be lost.

Last updated July 31, 2012 @ 11:22 am

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