Time Machine (Encrypted) Not Auto-Mounting on Boot with 10.14.4

I have a similar problem, except that sometimes I get prompted to enter the password for the disk, but when I enter it, it says it's already unlocked and prompts me to open Disk Utility to mount it. When I open Disk Utility, I can see the drive and that it's not mounted. I click the "Mount" button, and it mounts just fine. It just doesn't mount automatically when plugged in or after a reboot.

All I can suggest is to make sure everyone having this problem provides feedback to Apple since they do not monitor these discussions closely. By all means include a link to this discussion so they can see the extent of the problem. If you have a developer ID, you should also submit a bug there, as Apple pays more attention to those. Here's the link to give feedback: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

In some cases yes, and in some cases no. For example, I have stored my encryption passphrase in the keychain for as long as I can remember and have the issue. I have 4 encrypted drives that do not mount automatically since the latest Mojave update. I have removed the entries from within Keychain and have tried having keychain remember them, not remember them and so on and so on. The drives simply will not mount unless I mount them manually. I decrypted one of my drives and it mounts with no issues at login. Encrypted it again and now have to manually mount it again each time I reboot the computer.

Are all your external drives SSD's? SSD cases are likely unpowered. I own a couple of 4TB HDDs that are unpowered. Are you external drives self-powered (in a case that has its own power supply)? Have you tried booting up you iMac in safe mode with ONLY one of your external hard drives, and only enough external devices (like mouse pad if the iMac keyboard doesn't have one)? Unpowered devices plugged into your iMac draws power from the port it's plugged in. Too many devices drawing from the USB Controller in your iMac can prevent your drive from working properly with your iMac.

Yes, exactly the same problem here too on my MacBook Pro. Won’t mount the 2 time machine external drives automatically. Works fine once I mount manually in disc utility. Problem started immediately after update.

Had to verify with both login password and keychain disc passwords (different passwords) separately for both encrypted backups. After that it hasn’t asked again.

Also, tried adding time machine to the list of permissions in keychain amongst various things with no joy.

I did notice that there were 2 separate CSuseragent entries in the keychain permissions. Could this be important? Bit worried about removing one to check as I wouldn’t know how to re-add it.

Hope a fix is released soon, it’s very annoying!!

Further to my previous post, I went ahead and deleted the keychain entry for both my external hard drives. When I rebooted it requested the keychain password and then the hard drives appeared on my desktop without manually mounting. However, when I rebooted again they didn’t auto mount. I then rebooted without the drives connected and reconnected once open, they appeared without manual mount. Regardless of these minor successes, they obviously still don’t do what they should when already connected.

I’ve also reported this to Apple as an issue. Hopefully they’ll be a fix soon.

I get the same prompt, but after I enter the password, I get the response that the disk is already unlocked, and I still have to mount it manually. So it really does not auto-mount. See screenshot.

By the way, I submitted this as a developer bug and it is now marked "Dupe," which means it was already submitted and Apple are aware of it.

If your Time Machine still will not mount after 10.14.5 , and you cannot mount it manually with disk utility , or start it by selecting disk in system preferences : then either disconnect and reconnect it and try again ; or maybe you should erase and reinstall 10.14.5 over a clean HD disk , and try again ,to see if the time machine then auto-mounts , or even manually mounts .

i have no idea. but your not being clear. do you mean "Disk Utility" mounts the drive without asking for a pass? But your problem is it's not auto mounted, so that issue is not yet arrived, because your first problem is it's not automounted.

/Users/you/Library holds personal settings, app data specific to you (perhaps that disk you made encrypted - the auto settings were in Library and are not part of upgrade). Library settings are not always upgraded perfectly because apps have tons of options and some old options are not supported and some option combinations are simply not predictable (for 75 options calculate 75! (75 factorial) and see how many loose ends there can be).

your first problem is to find out if this is a disk setting (to change on that disk - perhaps in extended partition type), an OS default setting, or a user/Library stored setting

(the below wrong for your problem, but an example. also note 'defaults' can list all categories / items that have settings on the system)

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

(here we see that mojave has a breadth of tools from the Terminal app. i have no time to chase down this issue though. open terminal:)

$ man man

$ man diskutil

<snip>

SEE ALSO

     hdiutil(1), mount(8), umount(8), diskmanagementd(8),

     diskmanagementstartup(8), diskarbitrationd(8), corestoraged(8),

     fdesetup(8), ioreg(8), newfs_hfs(8), fsck_hfs(8), authopen(1),

     hfs.util(8), msdos.util(8), ufs.util(8), drutil(1), vsdbutil(8)

i assume diskarbitrationd is interesting and should be running (but ends up not being the issue)

I would instead check Launchpad->Console, which is very thorough, and see what messages arise concerning the disk when it is mounted. If there are no "hang ups" or errors, then you can assume mounting is normal and your issue is that the disk is simply not selected for automount.

did you try?

$man autofs

it could simply be that your disk has a mount point to a directory that autofs no longer auto mounts in mojave

on the other hand, if you have a backup, your intuition that it wouldn't be a bad idea to "re-create" the encryped drive. perhaps the filesystem is different and the old one, if encrypted, is not automounted, may be right

I see advice on how to prevent automount but not how to "re-enable it" since it's rather automatic.

Just because it's hard to find advice on it may be reason enough to do it "the long way".

I really can't help more because i don't have an encrypted journal (which mac format?) drive to run tests on. sorry.

In my first post, I stated that I have an external (spinning) encrypted disk that behaves normally after installing 10.14.4. What I had forgotten is the fact that this drive is an old FireWire 800 drive that is connected via a thunderbolt 2 to firewire adapter.

cfrombth says that he is having issues with both thunderbolt and USB drives.

So it appears to me that the connection type plays a role here.

Anyone having tested an external Thunderbolt 2 drive?

Since updating to Mojave I have observed the same issue. I have one external 3T drive configured with three partitions, one of which is solely for Time Machine. Upon booting up, only the first two partitions auto-mount. The Time Machine partition has to be mounted in disk utility or if I decide not to mount it manually, in about 10 minutes or so it magically appears. In either case, when it mounts, I have to enter my encryption password.

Seemingly now , my (modified) mac-mini's 10.14.4 software has , finally , re-learnt to auto-mount all disks , BUT , only if I do not clear the disk utility caches daily.....!! ) ie how many weeks later since 10.14.4 - 4?

This problem is NOT resolved by the latest macOS 10.14.5 Beta (18F127a). Disk utility doesn't even see the drives unless they are plugged in at boot. I am speculating that sleep may be the issue, that after sleep occurs, auto mounting doesn't work any more, I am curious if anyone has tested this?

Not related to Sleep either. I have that turned off and my drives are always powered on and connected. If I were to restart my iMac right now I'd have to manually mount all of my drives again after logging in. Just to add to this further, although the title of this discussion refers to Time Machine, this is not just about Time Machine. This is regarding any encrypted drive, regardless of whether or not it is connected at the time of powering on the computer or if it is connected after the fact.

I have a 2014 Retina MacBook Pro running macOS 10.14.4. FileVault is enabled on my system drive. I read your post and the comments from responders to your questions. Seems like they all have the same problems as you. Unfortunately, I can't see a problem with what you and your responders done that can cause your issue, so I can just give you the details of my setup as I haven't experienced it at all while recovering from a TM backup drive that died suddenly about a month ago. After finally decided on a more fault-tolerant but manageable data backup strategy and gathering new equipment, I finally started creating a new TM backup from scratch. Experience a lot of issues and learned a lot also! Hopefully you can spot something I did that helps you. I will monitor this conversation to supply more info if I can.

I created 3 partitions on an external 4TB HDD, two 1TB partitions formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) and one 2TB partition formatted MacOS Extended. Before the backup (131 GB) was completed (overnight) I also played with multiple scenarios to understand how things work as Time Machine has changed since I last used it about 2 months ago). My external HDD is a 4TB 5400 rpm WD Red Drive that I bought new 2 years ago but have not been really put to use until now.

Now, back to your concern, my external hard drive partitions has no problem mounting. As long as my external drive is connected to my mac, I always get the password prompt from macOS for the encrypted partitions while the unencrypted partitions mounted automatically. After I click the checkbox to save my encryptions password for the two secure partitions, they mounted with no human intervention on future system reboots.

I can't see much difference in what all of us have done. Although my HDD was bought for NAS file server, I chose the slower 5400 rpm to avoid overheating problems. While backing up my laptop for the first time, my external backup drive got warm and I directed two muffin fan at the drive that is mounted on a USB 2 HDD docking station. I suspect the incremental TM backups will take muck less time and I can move the drive into an air-cooled dual drive enclosure. I intend to put an identical 2nd drive in the enclosure for the same purpose, but used alternatively with the first. Hopefully, I'll have one surviving drive the next time a TM backup drive fails.