FileVault failed and now I can't turn it off.

onyxrev wrote:

I got into this trap while trying to decrypt my FileVault 2 partition. What I did to get out of it was roughly the following:

> diskutil cs list

I found my UUID in the list of Core Storage drives. It's the one listed as locked and encrypted.

> diskutil cs unlockVolume [your UUID]

Entered my FV2 password here. It gets unencrypted... ... ...

... ...

...

...Whew!

Ok, just so Apple does not look at this post and think they're ok because someone's got it figured out, I want to make it clear that the original poster's problem (and unfortunately *mine* too, and many others') would NOT be solved by this workaround, as ingenious as it indeed is toward its own application.

Most of us posting "me too, HELP!" on this thread are doing so because when we enter:

>diskutil cs unlockVolume [the appropriate UUID]

and then enter the password, the disk does NOT get unlocked or unencrypted:

KillsFascists:~ KillsFascists$ diskutil cs unlockVolume 56B7E8B5-183A-40FD-BD53-E2FC8D020736 -stdinpassphrase

Passphrase:

Error beginning CoreStorage Logical Volume unlock: The target Core Storage volume is not encrypted (-69755)

...and this is where most of us reading this thread have begun beating our heads against the wall and muttering at our machines, "It IS encrypted, you ****ing moron." See below:

Sequence: 14

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Encryption Context: Present

Conversion Status: Failed

Has Encrypted Extents: Yes

Conversion Direction: backward

So, what we are seeing here (thanks FileVault, I hate you) is some pretty critical, unencryption failure-induced cognitive dissonance. There IS encryption there, but diskutil insists that there couldn't be, since there was definitely this one time when it started to decrypt it- it totally remembers that- but it selectively forgets the part where IT FAILED TO FINISH decrypting. So, a big, nebulous chunk of my data is not secure because it did decrypt some of it, but since there is even one solitary byte still shrouded in FileVault mystery, I cannot, for example, change the size of my partition in order to let Bootcamp make space for a Windows install. Because I'm still "encrypted."

This is not ok. Fix this, Apple. Write a patch that I can run that will untangle this mess and force the program to finish the revert- you've had 2 years since complaints about this started coming in. I am angry enough to start waxing litigious. I know I am not the only one; ten thousand angry users have viewed this thread.

Hi. Thanks for insisting. I'm with you. This is a serious technology issue here.

urban_quohog wrote:

onyxrev wrote:

I got into this trap while trying to decrypt my FileVault 2 partition. What I did to get out of it was roughly the following:

> diskutil cs list

I found my UUID in the list of Core Storage drives. It's the one listed as locked and encrypted.

> diskutil cs unlockVolume [your UUID]

Entered my FV2 password here. It gets unencrypted... ... ...

... ...

...

...Whew!

Ok, just so Apple does not look at this post and think they're ok because someone's got it figured out, I want to make it clear that the original poster's problem (and unfortunately *mine* too, and many others') would NOT be solved by this workaround, as ingenious as it indeed is toward its own application.

Most of us posting "me too, HELP!" on this thread are doing so because when we enter:

>diskutil cs unlockVolume [the appropriate UUID]

and then enter the password, the disk does NOT get unlocked or unencrypted:

KillsFascists:~ KillsFascists$ diskutil cs unlockVolume 56B7E8B5-183A-40FD-BD53-E2FC8D020736 -stdinpassphrase

Passphrase:

Error beginning CoreStorage Logical Volume unlock: The target Core Storage volume is not encrypted (-69755)

...and this is where most of us reading this thread have begun beating our heads against the wall and muttering at our machines, "It IS encrypted, you ****ing moron." See below:

Sequence: 14

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Encryption Context: Present

Conversion Status: Failed

Has Encrypted Extents: Yes

Conversion Direction: backward

So, what we are seeing here (thanks FileVault, I hate you) is some pretty critical, unencryption failure-induced cognitive dissonance. There IS encryption there, but diskutil insists that there couldn't be, since there was definitely this one time when it started to decrypt it- it totally remembers that- but it selectively forgets the part where IT FAILED TO FINISH decrypting. So, a big, nebulous chunk of my data is not secure because it did decrypt some of it, but since there is even one solitary byte still shrouded in FileVault mystery, I cannot, for example, change the size of my partition in order to let Bootcamp make space for a Windows install. Because I'm still "encrypted."

This is not ok. Fix this, Apple. Write a patch that I can run that will untangle this mess and force the program to finish the revert- you've had 2 years since complaints about this started coming in. I am angry enough to start waxing litigious. I know I am not the only one; ten thousand angry users have viewed this thread.

I was having this same issue. So what I did to work around this was to restart into command r recovery mode. From there I was able to complete the unlocking process using the terminal. In my particular situation, I was looking to reformat so I do not know if the disk was able to stay unlocked with a restart.

I agree. If the disk had not been backed up it would have been a total failure. Even as it was, it was a waste of many hours to fix the original computer.

Basically, this feature needs to be removed by Apple as it is so buggy as to be unusable and thus leads to false advertising. As far as class action lawsuits, there is a possibility especially if data was lost. At the very least, time/money was lost and I'm quite sure the posters on this thread represent a miniscule minority of all those who have had FV problems as most OS X users wouldn't know what a terminal is, let alone how to pull off a recovery like this.

Finally, I was never able to recover the partition, despite all the help here. I was able to only reinstall the OS / restore it from my Time Machine. So there are the cases in which the solutions here do not work _at all_ (at least when I was doing this about 6 months back).

EDIT: I have no doubt this problem lingers in Mountain Lion, but I won't be the guinnea pig for it, that's for sure. FileVault is a bad joke.

Booting into Recovery and running unlockVolume from Terminal worked for me as well. I think this only happened to me in the first place because I booted into Recovery to reinstall ML before it finished decrypting the drive.

This is still a problem. I have enabled filevault successfully twice before on my mbp, same device, same drive, same amount of data, new OS. ML vs ML 10.8... Filevault fails, unable to encrypt or unencypt, fails all the way around. I'm only able to remove it through recovery mode.... Would love an update that would fix this. Trieda second time. failed again........😠

I would also like to confirm that this remains a serious problem. I have the same issues on a mid-2012 15" MBP, clean install, and several -known good- hard drives (even after wiping and repartitioning).

Pretty much a deal breaker - I sincerely hope this gets fixed.

iMac mid 2011 1 TB HD, same problem here. In the past, I was able to encrypt/decrypt the disk without any kind of problem. Right now, it is impossible. I always get the same error (using clean OS X 10.8.4 installation). I don't know why before i could do it and now i'm not.

It's very annoying.

Yup. This has been a problem since Lion and the introduction of Filevault 2 (apprpriately named Filevault to increase confusion). The reason is simple: Apple does not support disk encryption. Period. This is based on their lack of interest in creating a solution that works. If enough people were affected by this and experienced data loss, a potential class action lawsuit would surely follow (as the software does indeed make claims of usability and warrantability), however I doubt that will ever be the case.

What i don't understand is why i have been able to use Filevault 2 in the past with no problems and now i get these errors. It is the same computer. I have even been thinking of this could be a hard disk failure, because i also have some troubles to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion. From external HD and USB key the installation usually fails (not always). On the other hand, if i use Recovery partition and i download ML from Internet, it works and i get ML installed.

Everything sounds pretty bad. I am not sure if it is hard disk failure or not. I have used Disk Utility to verify the disk and it says everything is ok, but i'm still doubting because of all these errors.

Bump..

Still unfixed, still driving me mad. I know this will in no way fix the problem, but will my "locked but not locked" disc preclude me from erasing my hdd and installing a fresh copy of Mountain Lion using a bootable disc created from a copy off the mac app store?

UPDATE: This posting by switchbacker *might* have solved the problem for me. I can *choose* to turn FV back on if I ever wanted to - it doesn't throw up that "error -69755" message any more. However, I definitely don't really regard the problem as being fixed, given it required a complete wiping of my drive and some very anxious moments during the install.

NOTE: When I tried running the Mountain Lion installer using my external USB drive, after having used the installer to open Disc Utility and erase my "Macintosh HD" partition, it stopped at the "Installing..." screen and gave me an error message ("There was a problem installing Mac OS X") - hence the anxious moments.

I went into the installer log and found "Failed to locate volume with UUID XXXXXXXXXXXX". Googled this and found this posting:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3207417?start=0&tstart=0

Like the OP on this thread I've linked to, I found that resetting the PRAM let me continue with the reinstall.

Pleased-ish.

Same issue here.

diskutil cs unlockVolume [uuid]

Passphrase:

Error beginning CoreStorage Logical Volume unlock: The target Core Storage volume is not encrypted (-69755)

I enabled FV. It failed. Now it wants me to turn FV off, but I can't. Seems **** flakey to me. How can we take Apple security seriously if they can't get securing my internal drive right!

My issue was:

FileVault failed to encrypt my internal SSD (boot drive).

>diskutil cs list:

Encryption Status: Locked

Conversion Status: Failed

Has Encrypted Extents: Yes

Fully Secure: No

Passphrase Required: Yes

What I did to resolve:

1. Searched and read everything I could about FileVault, CoreStorage and SSD.

2. Backed up my entire system using time machine.

3. Booted into recovery mode.

4. Unlocked the volume (my internal boot drive).

5. Reformatted the SSD with "Journaled, Encrypted" option.

6. Restored my entire drive from time machine backup.

Note: system automatically restarts when done restoring. Just restart back into recovery mode again. You may be prompted for your disk password. That's a good sign.

7. Booted into recovery mode.

8. Unlocked the volume to allow a reset of the ACLs.

9. Used resetpassword to "reset" the ACLs. I updated the login password for good measure, too.

10. Restarted normally and logged in as the reset user.

11. Enabled the user in FileVault so you're not prompted by the disk password at start up.

References:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427 - OS X Time Machine basics

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 - OS X Recovery basics

http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/03/how-to-boot-into-os-x-lions-recovery-hd-partition /

http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/using-the-command-line-to-unlock-or- decrypt-your-filevault-2-encrypted-boot-drive/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/format-ssd-macbook-35208.html

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_resolve_user-level_permissions_iss ues_mac_os_x

Observations:

It took me three attempts at this process to get it right. Each attempt was over 8 hours in duration due to the fact my SSD is 1TB. I was afraid of losing my data. And a couple times the system hung or froze. I was forced to do a hard shutdown. But with persistence, a great deal of patience and trust in the technology. I finally got it all working and it seems there was no loss of data.

Don't use the computer during this process. Don't shut it down, etc. I know the documentation and the screens say it is OK. But I think that is what got me into this mess in the first place.

Good news!

Like some of you I have made a mistake and allowed my Mac to reboot to complete system upgrade before the running in the background decrypt task could complete (it shouldn't be allowed on the OS X level, by the way).

Here is what worked (finally!) for me:

1. Unlock: `diskutil cs unlockVolume UUID`

2. Decrypt: `diskutil cs revert UUID`

The key part was to run also the 'revert' and not just 'unlockVolume'. This allowed this hidden beast to clean up its weird state, which otherwise didn't allow to turn FV on nor off.

@Credits

I hope this helps.