FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

I had this issue too! I called apple support and they helped me, but it was not an easy fix. It took over 2 and 1/2 hours. Make sure your laptop is backed up before you even start the process! When I did this, they made me recover my laptop, but there was much more of a process before hand and afterwards. CALL APPLE BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING! do not just restart your laptop, it is much more of a process than this! But hopefully this helps! Another way to chat with apple is to go online and you can chat there! If you look at Nields example, that is what you would do! But, the apple person I chatted with while doing this said that you don't need to turn on FireVault again unless you feel it necessary! you can keep that off by going into system preferences> security and privacy> firevault> turn off FireVault! Hopefully this helps! They have not found a resolution to this besides recovering and restarting for right now, but hopefully with the next update or so they will fix this!

I've read about 80% of this lengthy thread and while some solutions worked for some, my brand new rMBP15 was still stuck encrypting right after the initial install. So after 2 frustrating hours, I decided to just blow away the logical volume group. In my case, I created a bootable USB drive with Mavericks using another Mac.

1. Boot into USB drive containing Mavericks install disk by holding the Option key during booting.

2. Go to Terminal and type "diskutil cs list" and note the length cryptic number at the top next to "Logical Volume Group" it should look something like this: "C699A7CC-9B85-4A6D-96C8-87CFB18DE173"

This number is unique to every Volume group, do NOT copy this number here.

3. Select & copy your LVG number into clipboard

4. Still in Terminal type "diskutil cs delete YOUR-LENGTHY-LVG-NUMBER" This will kill all your data, so make sure you have backed everything up before this step.

5. Exit Terminal and start Disk Utility

6. In Disk Utility, create a new Partition "Macintosh HD"

7. Exit Disk Utility and select "Install Mavericks" from the options

This is the brute force method and it solves nothing about Yosemite and FV2, but some of us need to get back to work instead of spending hours on the phone with Apple support or reading hundreds of thread messages.

Friends,

I tried the simpliest way. And it's worked.

1. Backup copy by time machine

2. Boot computer using cmd +R

3. Utilties/erase hd macintosh - no encryption - only chronical

4. Quit to main panel

5. Use time machine copy

No filevault stuck in new Mac Air !!!!

OK LISTEN UP

Please each and everyone of you contact apple and fill in the feedback form. If you don't it will be seen as something of an marginal issue. We once again got an update without any solution to this.

Tried pretty much every method described on this thread, eventually tried to restore a time machine backup and that failed and left the drive unusable. Had to delete the logical volume group to even be able to reinstall Yosemite. I have yet to see whether the time machine backups will actually work. For a known fault I'm surprised this hasn't been addressed yet, not what you want when you've just spent £1500 on a brand new MBP...

scafede

Federico
Thank you. You are an angel.
Restart, Reset PRAM and booting in Restore mode, repairing partition did the trick. The encryption un-paused and decrypted in less than 30 minutes.

AWESOME.

I have two quick questions to you guys about the issue (I'm still having it):

1. Can I reinstall the system without touching any of my 600gb data, and expect all of the files will be 100% usable with FileVault switched to off on fresh build?

2. If I was to back up all of my "half" encrypted files on TimeMachine, reinstall OS X (this time without FV encryption), and then put them back on disk, will I be able to access them without any problems?

I am one of these people who can't afford to wipe the whole disk, simply because all of the files are critical for my work and I cannot afford to lose them.

It would help a lot to know answers to both of the questions. I am losing hope for Apple to solve this at this point unfortunately.

Hey,

No there's no workaround. I think you can do a time machine back up. I'm in the same situation as you. It ***** big time. I just bough a new MacBook Pro and had already transferred all important files once I noticed the issue. On top of that my old MBPs hard drive died on me so I'm stuck. This is such a stupid issue and I cannot believe that with a premium product I need to sit here and wait for them to fix it. We're on 10.10.3 already and still nothing done to the issue.

So you tried filevault on first system startup and it failed, you reformatted the drive & let it run w/out filevault until 10.10.3 came out, ran the 10.10.3 update, reset PRAM, then enabled filevault and it works okay?

Interesting. I undid the partial encryption by formatting the drive. I got the laptop new and since I didn't have anything on it, I was more OK with doing that thing.

I just took a Time Machine backup so I think I'll try the FV encryption tonight since I've updated to 10.10.3.

I had faced this issue for long with my new macbook pro. I tried reformatting, re- installing Yoesmite, but nothing worked.

The last attempt I made was verifying permission and then repairing them. Restart and press cmd+r. Go to disk utility and verify and repair permissions for your disk.

From what the logs said, there was some permission issues for a printer driver and which caused the Encryption to fail.

Hope it helps.

So have this worked for you? I mean, I've noticed I had issues with printer permissions too, but nothing has changed.

It really amazes my, by the way, that the well known solution for the problem works for half the people here, and the other ones still can't get through it in any way.

Is this model dependent? Or, if not, what does it depend on? Any ideas?

I mean, there has to be some sort of a scheme.

I just updated to 10.10.3. After the reboot and installation FileVault started encrypting again. After about 40 minutes encryption was completed. I'm on a new 15-inch MacBook Pro, mid 2014, purchased about a week ago to replace a stolen MacBook Pro with the same specs. I initially ran into encryption problems when trying to restore my new MacBook from a backup of my stolen MacBook. I ended up getting the "encryption paused connect to a power supply" issue that I couldn't resolve.

Seems like it's fixed now.

Ok I solve mine without reinstall, time machine etc

OSX 10.10.3

1. get USB drive(UHDD) size bigger that internal

2. boot into recovery

3. unlock you drive(right click unlock) SSD1

4. restore UHDD with content of SSD1(~6hr)

5. on UHDD will be all your files unencrypted (i even boot machine from in to check)

6. format SSD with Mac OS extended (journaled)

7. restore SSD with content of UHDD(~6hr)

8. ta da! you have all your files unencrypted

9. boot as normal and turn on filevault

10. after 3hr all become as it should be.

Thank you so much Eugeny44!!!

I WAS stuck on this paused state since November/2014.

I followed your procedure and it solved my problem. Now, the disk is encrypted.

I am using Yosemite 10.10.4 (Public Beta).

Thank you again.