Time Machine external drive & password issue

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Level 1

20 points

Time Machine external drive & password issue

I purchased a Seagate external drive for Time Machine backups on my 2019 MacBook Pro. I reformatted it, and set it to be encrypted and password protected. For months the password window appeared every time I connected the drive. Then it stopped. I was able to access the drive without a password. I reformatted the drive and the password window appeared for a while. Then it stopped. I thought it was a problem with the drive so I purchased a Samsung external drive. The same thing happened to the new drive.

The purpose of the password is to stop someone accessing the external drive, so if the password window does not appear is the drive still secure? Does it happen because I only use it on my one computer and not anywhere else? If someone tried to use the drive on any other computer would the data show up or would the different computer stop things?

How do I fix this? Can I fix this? Do I need to fix this?

Posted on Oct 17, 2025 5:05 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

68,612 points

Oct 17, 2025 6:59 PM in response to Frodo99

It sounds like you allowed the password to be saved in the Keychain (or Passwords if a later version of macOS). There is usually a checkbox to allow the password to be saved. Either this checkbox was activated automatically & you did not notice it, or you accidentally activated that checkbox.

If that TM drive was picked up by someone, then it would be encrypted & require a password.

If someone has access to your macOS admin user account, then they already have access to your data so having the TM backup volume password saved in the Keychain/Passwords, then it is not really a security issue....they can already access the data on your boot drive.

You can delete the TM backup saved password from the Keychain/Passwords if you wish to be prompted all the time.

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Answer 2

Frodo99 Author

Level 1

20 points

Oct 18, 2025 12:41 PM in response to HWTech

HWTech

"It sounds like you allowed the password to be saved in the Keychain (or Passwords if a later version of macOS). There is usually a checkbox to allow the password to be saved. Either this checkbox was activated automatically & you did not notice it, or you accidentally activated that checkbox."

If the checkbox was either automatically or accidentally checked why did it take weeks before the password window did not appear?

"If that TM drive was picked up by someone, then it would be encrypted & require a password."

Thank you. That makes me feel better.

"If someone has access to your macOS admin user account, then they already have access to your data so having the TM backup volume password saved in the Keychain/Passwords, then it is not really a security issue....they can already access the data on your boot drive."

I understand.

"You can delete the TM backup saved password from the Keychain/Passwords if you wish to be prompted all the time."

I don't have anything in the Password app but in the Keychain Access app I found both Seagate and Samsung under login >> Passwords. They both show "Kind: encrypted volume password". I don't want to delete something critical, so if I delete that line what would happen? Would it just "un-save" the password, but still require it for login? Would it delete the password, which would mean no password at all but I could still access the drive without it? Would it delete the password, but lock me out so I need to reformat the drive? Could it do something else that really messes things up? I've wrecked things before.

Since you write that the drive won't work on a different computer without the password you've answered the main question. I won't mess with Keychain Access (unless you think I need to).

Thank you for your assistance.

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Answer 3

Frodo99 Author

Level 1

20 points

Oct 20, 2025 1:05 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder

"I do not believe you can 'accidentally' convert your drive to un-encrypted."

I never intended to convert encrypted to un-encrypted but it sounds like something I could do accidentally by deleting something critical so I won't be messing with anything in the Keychain Access app. HWTech says it is password protected even without a password required window and I will trust that.

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Answer 4

Oct 18, 2025 4:24 PM in response to Frodo99

Requesting a drive that you ALREADY have open access to be converted to un-encrypted takes only a moment.

But it is vanishingly difficult to do this by accident, because you will be required to type in your Admin password in the resulting dialog box to proceed.

The actual conversion of encrypted to un-encrypted requires re-writing the entire contents of the drive, and can take somewhere between all afternoon to several days to complete, using times when your computer is awake but not too busy.

I do not believe you can 'accidentally' convert your drive to un-encrypted.

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