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I just read in another post that encryption could take weeks. I am in the middle of a backup and it’s been encrypting for hours. I wanted to do the backup before I deleted some files prior to migrating to a new Mac.
I don’t care if the files are encrypted. Can I just stop Time Machine? Will it hurt the files that it just backed up? And for future backups can I opt out of encryption?
i could not find a good Topic to choose from.
running Big Sur 11.6
MacBook Pro 15″, 10.13
If you stop the backup then it isn't going to back up the files.
Here is what I suggest:
1) Stop the backup.
2) Erase the Time Machine drive and reformat it as APFS Encrypted.
3) Setup Time Machine again. Make sure to turn Encryption on.
The problem is that when you turn on encryption of a previously unencrypted drive, the system wants to encrypt the entire drive, including any free space. While that probably won't take weeks, it will take a long time, depending on the drive.
However, if you erase the drive and initialize it as encrypted from the start, then you don't have to encrypt the free space. When you setup Time Machine, it will respect and already-encrypted drive and operate normally.
Yes. You can ignore all of this, erase the hard drive, and keep it unencrypted. You will save 0.0 seconds.
If you stop the backup then it isn't going to back up the files.
Here is what I suggest:
1) Stop the backup.
2) Erase the Time Machine drive and reformat it as APFS Encrypted.
3) Setup Time Machine again. Make sure to turn Encryption on.
The problem is that when you turn on encryption of a previously unencrypted drive, the system wants to encrypt the entire drive, including any free space. While that probably won't take weeks, it will take a long time, depending on the drive.
However, if you erase the drive and initialize it as encrypted from the start, then you don't have to encrypt the free space. When you setup Time Machine, it will respect and already-encrypted drive and operate normally.
Yes. You can ignore all of this, erase the hard drive, and keep it unencrypted. You will save 0.0 seconds.
About the Time Machine backup password on Mac
To encrypt the Time Machine backup, you must provide a backup password. No one but you should have access to your password. Choose a hint that helps you remember your password. To restore files from encrypted Time Machine backups, you must provide your backup password.
Important: If you lose or forget your password, you can’t restore or recover your data.
This is a guess, but if one were to Stop, by any means, the Time Machine Backup from the Encryption process - the Whole Backup could be corrupted.
If that were to happen, the only option would to Wipe the Entire External Drive and start a new Time Machine Backup without Encryption
I saw on another post about time machine encryption that I could double check the progress through the terminal:
fdesetup
diskutil cs list| grey ‘Conversion Progress’
the progress (25%) matched what time machine was saying but the fdesetup said FileVault is Off. What does that mean?
" fdesetup status " without the quotation marks, might be more accurate - but am not a big Unix and Terminal user so proceed with caution.
that should be "grep".
Encrypting Time Machine has nothing to do with File Vault.
Time Machine Encryption
