Since you use your Microsoft account as your Windows 10/8 credentials, and since Microsoft manages those accounts online, you can easily reset your lost Windows 10 or Windows 8 password from any browser, on any computer or device, including your smartphone. Apple’s Soft Reset feature disables both the wireless network password and the device password for 5 minutes. During this time, you could connect your Mac, for example, to your wireless network and then you could open Airport Utility and connect to the Airport. Attempts to reset apple Airport Extreme time machine password failed. Followed instructions below, but network was unavailable for few minutes, then returned expecting 'forgotten' password.
I lost my password to my Time Machine backup. It's on a Seagate FreeAgent USB drive. I don't mind losing the data, I just can't figure out how to format the drive. I found this thread, however, the 'Erase' tab that's mentioned doesn't appear when I select the drive. It's also grayed out for the partition.
I've tried running VirtualBox and accessing the drive in Windows, but the FreeAgent drive is grayed out as one of the available devices.
I've also tried hooking up the disc to a Windows XP machine and running the EaseUS partition tool, but that tool doesn't give me the option to format (as if it was grayed out).
Any thoughts or ideas?
2 Answers
you've probably answered this already, but you need to use the terminal.
Forgot Time Machine Password
diskutil list
and then
diskutil eraseDisk nameofnewdisk /dev/diskX
replace diskX with disk0 or disk1 or whatever from diskutil list
Forgot Time Machine Encryption Password
Sort of surprized you can't format via Disk Utility app.
Lost Time Machine Password Keychain
Check the Seagate web site and see if they have a disk utility app for the Mac. I'm guessing they have something that will format the disk. IIRC my Freeagent GoPro drive had some utlities on the disk (of course I wiped them out, and reformatted the drive). Worth a check.