How long does it take to decrypt a backup disk for Time Machine backups? I need to use my external hard drive for something else soon but Time Machine just says 'Decrypting Backup Disk...' and I cannot pause it. How long do you think it should take to decrypt a 2TB external hard drive that only used up a small portion of it's space?
Days, maybe weeks, I think I've seen 2 months but maybe that was a 4TB drive.
Use Terminal with this to get an idea...
Filevault state, open Terminal & paste these in…
fdesetup status
diskutil cs list | grep 'Conversion Progress'
I accidentally unplugged the drive, so I plugged it again and the same 'decrypting...' message came. My solution was to remove the drive from time machine then re-add it. But I still don't know why it would take so long. I read another post that said the decryption process would remove the encryption above, but after removing the drive from Time Machine, all was well again...
Thanks for the report, so all is well now?
Yup! All well now! Thanks BDAqua!
Great to hear! :)
'Decrypting Backup Disk...' taking a long time
