Q: FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

Pending... Did not work

FileVault is On.

FileVault master keychain appears to be installed.

Encryption in progress: Pending

I'd love to file a bug report, but it won't let me login to the bugreport page. I've had a couple other people in geographically dispersed locations try and they had the same problem.

Resetting SMC and PRAM didn't work for me.

I eventually phoned Apple today and they are aware that it is an ongoing issue, and that what triggered it for me was when I started the encryption process but accidentally knocked the power lead which must of confused FileVault a bit.

I had some issues with my partition and disk, so it was escalated to a senior tech who guided me through that and implied that a fix would be issued for it, but that the whole process should work on a fresh install (which I have now), unless of course I accidentally detach it from a power cable (then i'm obviously back to square one).

I won't bother with FileVault for now until its rectified. It's a shame its an issue which appears to have been going on for quite a long time. The senior tech support guy that I spoke to earlier though? Faultless. I'm amazed at the service I received!

I've got just the solution! I called apple support and then talked to a senior staff member. He said that this was not necessarily a common problem, but he has seen it sometimes. MAKE SURE BEFORE YOU START THE SOUND IS AT FULL!  (Don't worry, you wont loose any memory during this whole process.) First, completely shut down your mac (make sure the power cord is plugged in starting now for the whole time). You will need 2 people for the next step. Press the power button. Before you do, have one person GET READY TO hold command and alt (option) and the other person GET READY TO hold down the p and the r button. Now press the power button. Hold down the buttons, and wait for the startup sound. (The mac screen might flash, don't worry.) After you hear the sound, release the alt and the p button. Then wait to see the apple logo, and let go of these (command and r) buttons. After it starts, it will ask you to pick a language. You will move to the next step. (Do the next step only if you have a password.) Press the file in the upper left hand corner, and press unlock Macintosh HD; then type in your password. After there will be 2 things saying macintosh HD. Click on the indented one. Now press repair (NOT repair permissions.) Wait until it is done. Then click on the apple logo in the upper left hand corner and press restart. Type in your password, and keep the power cord plugged in. Go to file vault. Now it will continue encrypting! Wait until it is done, then unplug the power cord. Voilá! After this step, you can turn off file vault and decrypt (that's what I did just in case, but you don't have to.) Then you are done. But make sure during this whole process that the sound is at full and you NEVER no matter what unplug the power cord.

This solution has been described earlier (and on some blog posts). Keep in mind that sequence to reset the pram (or smc) is different on different machines although the "repair" is the same. This solutions does not work for all of us (like myself with a brand new iMac whose power was never accidentally disconnected). Seems that if the problem was caused by a file system fault this may fix it. But for the rest of us it does not.

Why would you need two people to do that if you've got ten fingers?

This solution worked for me:

- turn your computer off

- when pressing the power button hold "command r" until the load screen appears then release the keys

- open disk utility/choose english language or whatever you desire

- within the disk utility you will see your drives listed on the left.  You will see something like "Macintosh HD" on the very top left with an identical one below it that is indented.

- select click on the one second from top and choose to unlock it/enter your password

- proceed to verify the disk then repair the disk regardless of the results

- proceed to select the very top left drive and verify the disk, then repair it regardless of the results

- quit that program from the top bar menu

- turn your computer off

- turn your computer on normally

- go to system preferences > Security & Privacy

ta da, it should work.  While calculating the time/optimizing it do not use the computer for anything else and ensure the computer does not fall asleep.  Very specific instructions, but it works.  Cheers, Ryan

*keep your laptop plugged in the whole time*

This solution has been posted earlier but it doesn't work for everyone...

Please people keep in sending feedback to apple reporting this issue. We're at 10.10.2 and yet we're without a fix. They just need to solve this.

I went to the Apple store after making a Genius Bar appointment and they told me at this point to only way to actually fix it the problem to is to have them empty the hard drive and restore it to a time machine backup.

Early 2014 Macbook Air, 128 gig FS, 8 gigs RAM.

semsijo

I just can't ******* believe it. I bought this new MacBook Air yesterday and guess why I'm switching to Mac from Windows? To avoid ******* **** like that.

 

I'm really disappointed by Apple. I already tried everything from this discussion but nothing worked. It's still bugged.

I will call the Apple Support now and if they don't have a quick and simple solution, I will find a really simple solution for me: I will just put the ******* thing back in the box and send it back.

 

Thanks god I have the opportunity to send this piece of **** back, I can't believe that this can happen to a new device from APPLE. This is ridiculous.

Same with me. After some good experience with Ipads and Iphones - I decided to go on with apple. But I am also very disappointed about this massive bug. Also the Apple Support was not that helpful for me. The guy was not really friendly and tried to explain that the only way / solution is to reinstall the OS. OK "so far so good". When I was asking who will reimburs (pay) my time spending nights and hours trying to find a solution he mentioned that I have bought the hardware - the OS is just a free  addon - so Apple is not in a warranty Position. (Never mind to get some money back - I just wanted to explain that this is not very user friendly ) -Strange! very strange??? Welcome to Apple world?

Same problem. Spoke to Apple and the following fixed it. Will erase the whole disk so make sure you are fully backed up.

1. Restart in recovery mode [command R]
2. Go to Terminal using drop down windows
3. Type: diskutil cs list
4. Copy the group number 1^st long number
5. Type diskutil cs delete [long number as above]
6. Exit Terminal
7. Reinstall OS X

Note: After stage 3 check how many groups were found. If one group then do as above. If two groups are found then you probably need to do the above twice but not sure about that as in my case it only found one group.

Good luck!

WARNING THIS INSTRUCTIONS WILL DELETE YOUR HARD DISK VOLUME:

     Type diskutil cs delete [long number as above]

man diskutil

delete | deleteLVG lvgUUID | lvgName

                           Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group. All logical volume families with their logical volumes are removed, the logical volume group is destroyed, and the now-orphaned physical volumes are erased and partition-typed as Journaled HFS+.

 

So basically, this is a reinstall of the OS.... That isn't a solution in my books!

It's slow and tedious. My problem was that I needed to turn Firevault off and couldn't do this as it hadn't completed the encryption and wasn't going to as it was permanently paused. So deleting everything and re-installing allowed me to do what I needed to do. But can understand that this is a drastic option which many will not want to do.

Thanks scafede, your solution worked this problem has been bugging me for days. I booted into recovery mode right after a PRAM reset, went into disk utility and clicked repair disk on my other partition. I also made sure to repair the encrypted disk last and then restarted the computer and it worked like a charm.