Delete a FileVault Encrypted volume without a Password

Okay I figured out this little trick after much frustration with a forgotten password. A while back I had decided to encrypt a small 4GB partition i used for some personal stuff, I used file vault. Everything was smooth and quick. Now a few weeks latter I have now forgotten what password I used ! – Frustrated I tried every possible combination of every password I have ever used to no avail.

After a while realizing I have a backup already of the data on that partition , I said to hell with it -Lets delete the partition. I openedd DiskUtility and attempted to repartition the disk back to one main partition , effectively removing the encrypted partition – But .. I forgot the password ! , Even DiskUtility would not let me do anything without first unlocking the partition. Damn!

So I tried the command line version diskutil , After some messing around and getting no where fast I found a mention of coreStorage in one of the errors spit at me. I then tried the following:

diskutil coreStorage , this gave me several options for handling filevault disks. The one command that could have saved me hours of frustration was simply this:

Diskutil coreStorage delete UUID-XXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX , Replacing the last part with your CoreStorage Logical Group ID from your machine. This is found by running this command:

diskutil coreStorage list

Hope this helps someone else, plus if you have a better method please feel free to share !

Devin,