FileVault—View progress when encrypting a drive

Prologue—

The encryption process is straight forward using FileVault full-disk encryption (or FileVault 2,) it can also encrypt any removable drive, helping you secure Time Machine backups or other external drives. You can read more here:

Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac - Apple Support

Encrypt your external backup drives for security purposes since OS X 10.8—

drives must be formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled with GUID Partition Table (GPT)

To encrypt a non-boot volume:

1. Right-click on the volume you want to encrypt
2. Select the Encrypt command and follow thru with a password dialog etc.

Since 10.9 TimeMachine can be encrypted from the System Preferences as well http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/Enable+FileVault+(whole+disk+enc ryption)+on+Time+Machine+backup+drives+o…

To encrypt a Bootable volume using CarbonCopyCloner: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/working-filevault-encryption

***The Mac must be awake and plugged in to AC power, while encrypting or decrypting a drive, this takes time, and can take days to complete.

***If Mac OS X tells you that you need to reboot, simply eject and re-mount the volume.

The focus of this User Tip—being able to view the progress when encrypting to see exactly where you stand.

This can be done using the terminal.app found in your Utilities Folder:

~/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

Prior to OS X 10.11.1 you simply had a converting dialog buried in the output via the command line, copy & paste :

diskutil cs list

Since El Capitan OS X 10.11.1 the output diskutil cs list shows encryption progress and this can be pared down to a detailed view, copy & paste::

diskutil cs list | grep -e "Conversion" -e "Volume Name"

(You replace the "Volume Name" with the name of your disk, most easily done by dragging the disk to the terminal window to complete the path.)

The output is clearly read:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---

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Related documentation: How to create a boot clone