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

10.14.4 caused both my time machine & Data Disk to be returned unmounted after restart. Apple engineering informs that if your machine is modified in any way , then , YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE APPLE SUPPORT UNTILL YOU RESET TO FACTORY SETTINGS .

I WAS TRICKED INTO BUYING A MODIFIED MACHINE , WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE , AND NOW I HAVE BEEN CAST ADRIFT BY APPLE SUPPORT , WHO ARE TRYING TO PRETEND THAT I DID THE MODIFICATIONS , WHEN , CLEARLY , I DID NOT .

CONCLUSION : if you modify your machine in any way you ( or buy a modified machine , second hand , even without first knowing that it has been modified ) you will now be treated as a "jail breaker " and criminal , and turned away from apple support , until you fall into line and factory reset your machine so that your little box made out of ticky - tacky is exactly the same as everybody else's little box made out of ticky -tacky !.....

N.B. now that Apple & Qualcom have (sort of) settled their dispute , maybe , just maybe , future mac os updates will , once more be a source of joy & pleasure , instead of the time-wasting nightmares that we have come to know since 10.13.6

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

Add me to the list as well, I also sent a bug report to Apple. After upgrading to 10.14.4 none of my encrypted drives will auto-mount at start up. Too confirm it is an OS issue and not hardware I even put 2 different drives into a LaCie 2-Big Thunderbolt 3 enclosure that were no encrypted. At startup they are both mounted, so I then encrypted one. Once that was done I restarted the iMac and sure enough the encrypted drive will not auto mount. I then connected the enclosure to a MacBook running 10.14.3 and there is no issues auto-mounting the encrypted drive at start up. I tested 2 different enclosures that have encrypted drives as well as USB flash drives that are encrypted. If I reset SMC once on the iMac, at boot the drives will auto-mount but after a restart they will not mount again, have to resort to going manual. This was tested using an iMac Pro and 2015 MacBook Pro.

This is helpful, but people who decide to do this need to be aware that their disk password will be stored in plain text in the script file. They might want to obfuscate the purpose of the script by naming it something non-obvious, like "Check Scores."

Personally, I found that I don't need to unlock the disk first, even though it's encrypted. Somehow it gets unlocked but not mounted. So I modified the script as follows:

delay 15
do shell script "diskutil mount [disk#]"

Get the [disk#] from step 3 above and replace [disk#] with it; it's the first entry under "Logical Volume," listed as "Disk:".

Yes thanks iT-F, I had already attached a whole page of this forum in an email to apple support staff- but will give further feedback ......it seems to me , however , that these forums are the place that apple staff push people who they can no longer help / or are not allowed to help : the latter being people with "modified" machines , who will be told by apple that they are no longer supported . ....CURIOUSLY , a day after the above email , the (modified) data and time machine disks started mounting ALMOST automatically( ie automatically , but with some slight delay in comparison to the mac HD) , but now the time machine is presented as yellow , meaning I now have to select the disk in system preferences & back up now in the drop down menu to colour it green ( ie to do everything automatically , as it should , at least before 10.14.4.) .

I think the case here is for users who don't store the encryption passphrase in the keychain. That's the case for me. I want to be prompted for the passphrase after I boot up. That's what's missing. I have to start up the Disk Utility, manually mount the Time Machine disk, and then it prompts me for the passphrase.

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.

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?

I just want to again add an observation, that if I forget to manually mount the encrypted Time Machine, I eventually get prompted for the passphrase, on the order of an hour after the system comes up. So, in a sense, it does "automount" and prompt me for the passphrase, but after a long delay. :-)

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.

This is what my machine does, too. An hour or so after turning the machine on I get a prompt to enter the password. And after entering the password the drive mounts. (My password is not stored in Keychain.)

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.

Yes , thanks , all disks now auto-mounting after 10.14.5 for almost the first time since 10.14.4 ( and the brush off from apple support blaming the problem on the modified mac-mini i was tricked into buying , and , saying I needed to factory reset to fix the issue......??!!)

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Thanks to apple inc. for listening to it's customers with 10.14.5 , not only over the disks not auto-mounting problem , but also with the new(old) iOS device support in iTunes .....well done apple inc.

[was not spam , "vaporland", but , a one-off offer for apple customers on this page , made AFTER the problem at hand was solved : in recognition of their help in getting apple to fix this disk's not mounting problem , nothing more...]