FileVault encryption never finishes

Question

FileVault encryption never finishes

Each time I restart my Mac, FileVault says that it has 2 hours remaining to encrypt my disk.

But after about a minute, it says that encryption is finished.

But this is not true, because the next time I restart the same thing happens.

Also note that the button to turn off FileVault is disabled. And I am unable to make any Time Machine backups because of this:

Time Machine did not back up because FileVault was encrypting or decrypting a disk. Backups will resume once FileVault finishes.

I looked through the Console logs and found the following error messages that indicate that the encryption process didn't finish, but rather failed.

default	09:24:04.804291-0700	kernel	disk2: I/O error.
default	09:24:04.804371-0700	kernel	er_fs_root_iterator_error_check:4800: MARKING VOLUME 'Macintosh HD - Data' FAILED DUE TO ERROR 5
default	09:24:04.829375-0700	kernel	encrypt_live_fs_data:4868: er: error 5 at fext: 0x2d87651:0x61535000.
default	09:24:08.064893-0700	com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice	-[APFSFDEController apfsIsConvertingOrReverting] [743] -- DMAPFSVolumeCryptoMigrationState: 4; dmError: 0
default	09:24:08.065032-0700	com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice	-[APFSFDEController _checkFDEEncryptionStatusTimer:] [975] -- looks like encryption/decryption is finished.

I have run First Aid on all of the partitions and it does not detect or correct any errors.

I am not able to restore the OS, since I am unable to complete a Time Machine backup to restore from.

How can I abort the encryption process and return to a state where FileVault is off?

Excerpts from system.log

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 22, 2020 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,506 points

Sep 22, 2020 11:11 AM in response to tonari-no-totoro

tonari-no-totoro wrote:

Each time I restart my Mac, FileVault says that it has 2 hours remaining to encrypt my disk.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/2e712437-a712-4622-a264-2bcf2984c2fb

But after about a minute, it says that encryption is finished.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/865bb5a0-7592-4148-b91e-713cfa8f23b8

But this is not true, because the next time I restart the same thing happens.

Also note that the button to turn off FileVault is disabled. And I am unable to make any Time Machine backups because of this:

Time Machine did not back up because FileVault was encrypting or decrypting a disk. Backups will resume once FileVault finishes.

I looked through the Console logs and found the following error messages that indicate that the encryption process didn't finish, but rather failed.

default 09:24:04.804291-0700 kernel disk2: I/O error.

default 09:24:04.804371-0700 kernel er_fs_root_iterator_error_check:4800: MARKING VOLUME 'Macintosh HD - Data' FAILED DUE TO ERROR 5

default 09:24:04.829375-0700 kernel encrypt_live_fs_data:4868: er: error 5 at fext: 0x2d87651:0x61535000.

default 09:24:08.064893-0700 com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice -[APFSFDEController apfsIsConvertingOrReverting] [743] -- DMAPFSVolumeCryptoMigrationState: 4; dmError: 0

default 09:24:08.065032-0700 com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice -[APFSFDEController _checkFDEEncryptionStatusTimer:] [975] -- looks like encryption/decryption is finished.

I have run First Aid on all of the partitions and it does not detect or correct any errors.

I am not able to restore the OS, since I am unable to complete a Time Machine backup to restore from.

How can I abort the encryption process and return to a state where FileVault is off?

<Excerpts from system.log.log>

Call Customer Support (800) MY–APPLE (800–692–7753)

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Answer 2

Sep 28, 2020 3:45 PM in response to tonari-no-totoro

This ended up not working out. It seemed as if the FileVault encryption finished, but then it went back to 5% -- I don't know why.

At this point I decided to replace the hard drive on the system even though I was not able to create a Time Machine backup first. I used a 3rd-party backup tool and bought an external HDD, which was much more time consuming than if I had been able to create the Time Machine backup.

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Answer 3

Sep 25, 2020 1:00 PM in response to leroydouglas

Since I was unable to use Time Machine to create a backup, I used a 3rd-party backup tool to clone my disk to an external disk. The cloning process failed when it was unable to read a file due to an I/O error, but, crucially, it showed the name of the file. After deleting that file, the disk cloning succeeded.

I then restarted my Mac and the FileVault encryption process started up again, but this time it hasn't (yet) had an I/O error and has made it to 14% so far (9 hours remaining).

In my opinion, macOS has two bugs here:

If the FileVault encryption process fails, System Preferences should indicate that rather than saying "encryption finished". This would have saved many hours of my time and Apple Support time tracking down what was going on. The 'fdesetup status' command line tool should also report that encryption failed.
Since FileVault encryption can run into unrecoverable errors, it should have an option to undo the encryption on the partially encrypted drive so that users don't end up in a stuck situation where they can neither go forward nor reverse out. Alternatively, there could be an option to continue with the encryption, but just delete any files that can't be encrypted.

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FileVault encryption never finishes

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