Mac 911
HOW TO RECOVER DATA FROM A MAC WITH T2 OR FILEVAULT ENCRYPTION AND WITHOUT A PASSWORD
Spinning disks are slow and solid-state drives (SSDs) used to cost a digital arm and a leg. That led many people to stick with hard drives or purchase Macs with low-capacity SSDs—like 250GB or 500GB—because the next increment up added many hundreds of dollars to the cost. (I’m sitting here with a 2017 iMac with a 1TB Fusion drive, so I am one of you.)
It’s a hard thing to discover that a loved one is incapacitated or has passed away and you can’t unlock the Mac or Macs they left behind to retrieve photos, important financial or legal information, or any of their digital traces. If the main account or any administrative user password is unavailable, a newer Mac may be completely unrecoverable.
Many times, a person who experiences dementia may have someone appointed with the legal right to access their devices. And someone who had a terminal illness or who had simply planned ahead with a will may have left their gear explicitly to someone or appointed an executor who has rights to access it. (This is not legal advice, by the way; consult an attorney with any questions about the legality of accessing someone’s hardware.)
But the right or need to access a Mac doesn’t mean one has the ability, and Apple has specifically designed its systems
