FileVault Decryption taking forever on MB Pro 2017

grego1985 wrote:

FileVault has been decrypting for the past few days as I believe I inadvertently have requested to turn it off - it jumps from 8 hours to 1 hour to 4 hours etc. Can I stop this somehow and leave it alone? I cannot back up to TimeMachine to my external drive because I am getting an error message that says "Time Machine could not back up the disk because it is being encrypted or decrypted by FileVault. Try again once FileVault finishes." I am running Big Sur Version 11.2 on a MB Pro 13 inch 2017.

Any suggestions on how to stop this decryption so I can use Time Machine? I will leave FileVault on but I just can't stop it from running. Help is greatly appreciated...

Once you make a decision, you have to let it complete, before you can change it again.

Yes it can take quite some time, especially large drives.

Turn off FileVault encryption on Mac - Apple Support