Long tech story with a happy ending and a funny punchline. I'll relegate some details to the replies.
I have an old (2015) MacBook. Something got corrupted. I can get to the drive in the recovery OS, but it won't boot. No problem. I was thinking of putting debian on it anyway. I figure I'll boot to recovery, get the data off it, reformat, Bob's your uncle.
...skipping how I wrecked the recovery OS and got it to where it wouldn't boot at all...
Target disk mode to the rescue! You can boot a mac of this vintage, press the letter T during boot, and it comes up like it's an external drive. But it's thunderbolt. And all modern macs are USB-C.
...$120 in adapters and cables later...
My 2021-vintage mac can see the 2015-vintage mac as an external drive! It prompts me for the FileVault password. It doesn't work. I KNOW my password. I've typed it daily for the entire 11 years I've used this laptop. Oh shit. The data is **right there** but it's encrypted.
My wife has an account on my laptop and I know her password. I try it. No dice. Oh double shit. Am I really not going to get my data? I'm suspecting corruption in the FileVault keys/data.
10 years ago, when my son was 7 I put an account on here for him so that he could play some game on it. The password, when he was that age, was simply spiderman.
I type spiderman and it decrypts! The drive mounts! fsck runs with no errors! I'm recovering data off the laptop! The progress bar on the rsync command could easily be showing my blood pressure going down.
#sysadmin #laptop #techsupport
Paco Hope
npub18m…edgg0
2026-10-09 13:50:40 UTC
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npub18mdv65n7xqd0dhu0895tw6xkkxmhereksgqs60087ng855cmeqkqmedgg0Published at
2026-10-09 13:50:40 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Long tech story with a happy ending and a funny punchline. I'll relegate some details to the replies.\n\nI have an old (2015) MacBook. Something got corrupted. I can get to the drive in the recovery OS, but it won't boot. No problem. I was thinking of putting debian on it anyway. I figure I'll boot to recovery, get the data off it, reformat, Bob's your uncle.\n\n...skipping how I wrecked the recovery OS and got it to where it wouldn't boot at all...\n\nTarget disk mode to the rescue! You can boot a mac of this vintage, press the letter T during boot, and it comes up like it's an external drive. But it's thunderbolt. And all modern macs are USB-C.\n\n...$120 in adapters and cables later...\n\nMy 2021-vintage mac can see the 2015-vintage mac as an external drive! It prompts me for the FileVault password. It doesn't work. I KNOW my password. I've typed it daily for the entire 11 years I've used this laptop. Oh shit. The data is **right there** but it's encrypted.\n\nMy wife has an account on my laptop and I know her password. I try it. No dice. Oh double shit. Am I really not going to get my data? I'm suspecting corruption in the FileVault keys/data.\n\n10 years ago, when my son was 7 I put an account on here for him so that he could play some game on it. The password, when he was that age, was simply spiderman.\n\nI type spiderman and it decrypts! The drive mounts! fsck runs with no errors! I'm recovering data off the laptop! The progress bar on the rsync command could easily be showing my blood pressure going down.\n\n#sysadmin #laptop #techsupport",
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