Unable to mount Filevault drive after system crash My old 2011 Mac Book Pro crashed, the SSD drive is a few months old and the motherboard is displaying a light but existing burn mark... It's fair to believe the motherboard is dead and that the drive is not.

There are a few files I would like to recover on a new mac but it seems that there is a problem there too. Let's mention here that the drive is using Filevault. The current machine I have is using Sierra, but there is a possibility that the old one was using High Sierra (can this generate incompatibilities?).

GUI approach

I see two hard drives in Disk Utility when I plug the bad boy in. Just to give a quick view:

AppleAPFSMedia
&gt; Preboot
&gt; Recovery
&gt; VM
Crucial_CT1050MX300SSD1 Media


For both main drives mount is greyed out, and First Aid works fine (no error), for the rest (Preboot, Recovery and VM) the First Aid gives an error.

Verifying storage system
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the object map.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Storage system check exit code is 0.
Repairing file system.
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the object map.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
File system check exit code is 0.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
An internal error has occurred.
Operation failed…


Mount can be clicked there and VM and Recovery mount fine (and without password). I should mention here that VM contains a "sleepimage" file of 8.59GB+. Side note, I am wondering if removing this could help me boot in a "fresh state" on the old machine.

Command line approach

diskutil cs list only shows a tree from the current hard drive.

diskutil list gives the following (I removed the internal disks):

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.1 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         1.1 TB     disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.1 TB     disk3
                                 Physical Store disk2s2
   1:                APFS Volume                         326.2 GB   disk3s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 21.1 MB    disk3s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.8 MB   disk3s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk3s4


My guess here is that disk2s2 should be my target, but nothing seem to work

➜  ~ diskutil mount disk2s2
Volume on disk2s2 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk2s2
disk2s2 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk3
disk3 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk3s1
Passphrase:
Unlocking any cryptographic user on APFS Volume disk3s1
Error unlocking APFS Volume: The given APFS Volume is not encrypted (-69593)
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk2s2
disk2s2 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil mount readOnly disk2s2
Volume on disk2s2 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil mount readOnly disk3
Volume on disk3 failed to mount; if it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil mount disk3
Volume on disk3 failed to mount; if it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb


I am open to suggestions.
And the answer is ... please upgrade to High Sierra because whatever is called APFS is not a fixed thing that is supposed to be compatible accross systems implementing it.