Q: FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

Sanderson, that looks fine to me. That's exactly how mine looked when I did Scafede's procedure.

Macintosh HD is your working drive. disk1 is the recovery partition (which as I understand it is a disk image that mounts in recovery mode). You don't want to mess with disk1.

I´ve had it with this and just did a wipe and clean install without Filevault. That then hung itself up, I had to force a restart and did another reinstall on top of that. As far as I can tell the system now runs fine, but I´m rather disappointed in Yosemite as a whole. Here´s to hoping 10.10.2 will fix all these things.

I´d appreciate any help in "veryfying" the performance, however that would be done.

If you are using a MacBook, you can check this...While you are running on battery (i.e., AC power is disconnected), check the battery.  If it says FileVault is a significant user of battery, then FileVault may still be trying to run in the background.  Two points: This is highly unlikely given your reinstall, but I once got to the point of checking absolutely everything so it may be worth a quick look.  Also, this suggestion doesn't answer your macro question about other possible performance problems, but I hope it helps a little.  I too am waiting for an Apple upgrade fix.

Hi all,

I had the same problem with a brand new MBP that came with Yosemite. I activated FileVault on battery power and then connected the power supply when the message "Connect power adapter to resume encryption" appeared. However, the encryption process did not continue and the message stayed.

I tried Scafede's procedure and all other ideas given here to continue the encryption process, but none of them worked for my Mac. Luckily the hanging process seemed to have no effect on the performance of the system.

This is how I was finally able to solve the problem:

I configured Time Machine and made a backup of the system. This went through without problems, despite of the hanging encryption process. Then I booted into recovery (Cmd+R pressed while rebooting), deleted the partition Macintosh HD in the disk utility und recreated it without encryption. After that I simply restored the system from the TM backup. Before rebooting I did a PRAM reset (probably unnecessary) and checked in the disk utility that the restored partition was indeed not encrypted. The Mac booted without problems and FileVault was deactivated. No data was lost, everything fine.

After that I dared to activate FileVault again - and this time the encryption process went smoothly.

Andrew call me back from Apple today. There is nothing they can do. I have to make a backup and reinstall. The bill for my time now exceeds $2700 much more than the price of the computer. I urge everyone to avoid MacBook Pro and Yosemite until Apple gets their act in gear. Naturally, I wouldn't touch filevault with a ten-foot pole.

Thus, if you want enterprise computing with a secure file system you must opt for Windows.

I never thought I would say that.

Sad day.

How do you erase Yosemite and start over?

scafede wrote:

 

Hi,

same problem, i've try the command in terminal but no way

i've resolved the issued doing this:

restarting my mac book pro ssd 500gb

reset pram with option+cmd+p+r

booting with cmd+r the utility disc (i've macintosh hd and one partition encrypted (the one with encoding paused)) >select the partition encrypted>click file and unlock>repair the partition disk>repair permission on partition>repair macintosh hd

restar

the encryption was resumed, after almost 9 hour the encryption ended.

 

Hope this can help you.

Federico

Thank you very much, scafede. I got a MacBook Pro for Christmas and set it up with FileFault (which Apple recommends during setup). It took almost half an hour to go throught the setup process, and then as I was exploring the settings, I discovered I had the same problem as everyone here - encryption paused even though I was plugged in, and it never resumed. Your solution worked perfectly for me.

Just though I'd chime in with another similar story. I just bought a macbook pro retina. Enabled FileVault assuming it would actually work. The progress bar shows what appears to be 100% complete, but it says the encryption is paused due to being on battery even though the power adapter is plugged in and it's fully charged. I tried a few of the suggestions here with no luck. We need a patch for this issue ASAP!!

This is my first Apple laptop after being a long time Windows user. So far I am not impressed. I thought this sort of tweaking was only necessary on Windows boxes.

Just wanted to add my name to something that appears to be happening to quite a few new users of FileVault on new MacBooks. There are many good suggestions in this post and I wanted to say thanks to those of you who positively contribute to fix everyone else's issues. I will be trying to fix this issue based on some of your findings.

I've also been dealing with the "Encryption Paused" problem on a new Macbook Air. I've been monitoring this thread for a few months and I've tried most of the solutions presented here to no avail. I ignored the problem for a long time, but finally gave in and decided to start from scratch.

I was concerned that the FileVault state might somehow affect the time capsule backups, so I tested the latest backup on an older mac pro first (successfully). Once I verified that the backup/recovery process was sound I began the process on the Macbook Air. I left FileVault disabled during setup and enabled it after migration assistant completed.

Everything seems fine, *now*, but after initial FileVault setup I received the "Encryption Paused" message again for a few minutes. As I sat there stunned the encryption process finally kicked in.

Thank you to everyone who has attempted to help others on this thread. FileVault is a pretty sensitive operation and it's scary to feel like your data is at risk.

I'm disappointed that a thread this long has gotten no official response. "Patch coming soon" through word of mouth is unacceptable.

I fixed it by doing a clean install. I used TimeMachine to backup the current data to an external hard drive. Then recovery mode to erase the Macintosh HD partition. Then reinstalled OS-X in recovery mode. Took about 2 hours to download everything over WIFI. I used my apple iCloud account as the login account as before.

During the re-install, it never asked if I wanted FileVault enabled. It enabled it by default and started encrypting in the background. But it finished encryption this time. I left the power adaptor plugged in the whole time.

Now I have to figure out how to do a partial restore from Time Machine.

Just bought new 13" Retina Mac. I checked enable File Vault during the initial Migration from Time Machine during the setup. Got the "Encryption Paused..." warning. Tried every trick on the web to fix it with no luck. Everyone save your time and just WIPE THE HARD DRIVE AND START OVER!!! After clean install, I setup new Mac without Migrating anything. When it asks for User and Computer Name, just put whatever in those fields because you'll write over it when you finally do Migration later. After setting everything up like new computer, go get all updates from App Store. With that done, plug in Time Machine Backup and open Migration Assistant. It won't ask to Enable File Vault during this process. When everything is restored and you're happy, go to File Vault tab and select Enable. Done. Clearly a bug in Yosemite setup.

To avoid reinstalling my apps, I ended up doing a full restore from Time Machine which also turned off File Vault. Then I enabled FV which finished encrypting in about an hour. So the quickest fix is to do a full backup to TM then a full restore in recovery mode.

We had that too - a brand new mac - we took it back to the apple store and the they replaced it. The replacement one went thru the same step just fine, and has had no issues in the last few weeks.

We'd previously tried the PRAM reset too, and that didn't take it any further forward.

This is sooooooo frustrating and disappointing. I mean really. I was just assured a few days ago by Apple tech support (after they lost my Mavericks download) that Yosemite was "well out of beta and the most stable and secure operating system Apple has produced to date" and also that if I upgraded to Yosemite I would have my computer "up and running better than ever in a couple of hours" Hmmmph. So much for that idea. I've been trying to restore (or at this point rebuild and reinstall) a windows partition just so that I can play a stupid game over my holiday break and enjoy myself for a few hours. Well, it's been three weeks of frustration and I still can't play my game. I may just go buy a PC and sell the POS my computer has become.

I've been a loyal Apple customer for years and don't mind paying the premium because usually their products are well tested, work properly with minimal fuss, and their tech support is highly capable. Well, they failed on all three counts for me this month and my hard-earned cash may find a home elsewhere from now on.

They should have a disclaimer. And they should be giving us a portion of our money back for this hassle.