FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

After fighting with a problem for 10 months, I finally gave up and reinstalled the system today (but it took me 5 hours and I'm back to exactly the point I have been earlier today with the same - but unlocked - system; more on that below)

Yesterday, as a lot of people here, I set up a call with Apple support to maybe get a hint or two from them how do I approach the problem. I didn't expect much, and eventually the talk went more or less they way I expected. They completely don't know how to approach the problem. I even got an answer why - apparently they don't have any procedures or help protocols for the situation of half encrypted disk. I guess Apple really tries to avoid the problem, since even their own help line wasn't given any guidelines how to help people with this issue. My guess is it doesn't look good when you market your electronics with safety in mind, and then simple bug compromises this and breaks the integrity of that system. But anyways, the guy on the line was kind enough to admit he won't be able to help me too much, and so we ended the call with nice goodbyes.

So, todays release of El Capitan only pushed me to finally do something about it, and I decided to solve the issue for good which is so far only achievable by reinstalling the system. I was super worried about my data (almost one terabyte of important work things), and I wasn't sure enough, that if I do Time Machine back up of half encrypted files they will be ok.

So to clear things up for everyone - the moment you back up even full encrypted drive onto Time Machine, the mac decrypts it. You have to choose separate encryption for it in Time Machine settings.

I double checked it. I borrowed a drive from a friend, and set up a new backup. After 3-4 hours the drive was ready. I plugged it onto my sisters mac and started browsing every single file to see if they are ok. They were. I swept every weird corner of that disk (my files) and everything was working.

So to give you a quick guide of how I did it and what steps you need to pay attention to:

1. Get a drive, set up new Time Machine, and do a full backup of your disk

2. If you are panicking, make two of them ^^

3. Restart your mac, and after the chime press Command + R to enter Recovery Mode

4. Go into Disk Utility

5. Find your drive and unlock it by providing your password

6. Go to Erase tab

7. Important: Type a name of a partition that will be set up. This might be important if you have path-dependent aps or libraries (like my audio samples). You want to have the same drive name, and same paths for newly installed system

8. Important: In the format section, make sure you pick Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Don't pick the (..., Encrypted) version!

9. Erase the disk (for me it lasted a few seconds)

10. Quit Disk Utility

11. Find and click Reinstall OS X

12. Follow instructions on the screen.

13. After the system downloads/installs you will get into configuration manager

14. Important: This will be the first time OS will ask you if you want to turn on FileVault. Make sure you uncheck this box.

15. Important: At one point, there will be option to copy a data on your newly set up Mac from Time Machine backup or another Mac. Do it. Select that you want to copy everything (three checkboxes)

16. After everything is copied, you will have another configuration screen.

17. Important: You will be asked for the second time if you want to turn FileVault on. Again, uncheck the box.

After that, your OS will welcome you just as you left him before backups, only decrypted. 🙂

I managed to install El Capitan after that without any problems. Before, the installation app wouldn't let me through because of not finished encryption process.

Actually not at the top. the disk utility is at bottom I believe. Otherwise what you are saying is correct.

Thanks.....just to be clear, you didn't reinstall anything. You just ran Disk Utility from the USB drive on the Internal Drive that's paused with Filevault. After running repair, did you just restart the Mac using the internal startup disk? Is this where you saw the process un-paused?

-Kevin

Yes I didn't install anything. After repair I just restarted regularly(I didn't pressed the option key while booting up). After start up I went System Prerefences> Security & Privacy. I saw that encryption is resumed at this page.

Thanks.....will have to give it a shot.

Wonder why this would work where booting to Recovery console doesn't?!? Same thing.....booting to a different drive.

-Kevin

Thanks for the directions. Did everything and no luck....still stuck in Paused.

This really makes me upsets that Apple just doesn't care about the Mac anymore to even bother with this bug. Telling people to spend hours rebuilding a system is garbage advice.....but that's likely what I'm going to need to do.

-Kevin

i just tried these steps and now filevault is decoding!

1. reboot
2. reset pram with option+cmd+p+r
3. booting with cmd+r the utility disc
4. select the partition encrypted
5. click file and unlock
6. repair the partition disk
7. repair permission on partition
8. repair macintosh hd
9. select the partition encrypted
10. click file and decoding if clickable (months ago was grey and this procedure did not work!!!)

a warning told me that the decoding was started!!! I hope someone can solve the issue with this procedure!

...now I can install El Capitan 😀

sorry:

10. click file and "turn off encryption"

So like many others......my Mom's Filevault magically started today. I actually went to her house to try everything listed here....and when nothing seemed to work, I started taking backups to prepare to re-install (she had TM, but I like multiple copies).

After copying about 200GB off the machine, I went to re-install and I checked Filevault one last time and was shocked it was working. We did have a long Optimization period afterwards......but it did finish.

Wish I could offer help on what happened......but we just don't know.

-Kevin

Just wanted to mention this one again. It totally worked for me. The Disk Utility included with the El Cap installation is the 'updated for El Cap' version, and First Aid was able to find and fix the problem. I restarted, and encryption resumed, and was finished in just a minute or two. Score.

1-I created a bootable disk with the DIY option at this link http://lifehacker.com/how-to-burn-os-x-el-capitan-to-a-usb-flash-drive-173342513 3 the el capitan app is already downloaded so I used this.

2-I booted to usb with pressing option key at start up.

3-after language selection I clicked on disk utility

4-I unlocked the disk and while it is selected I clicked the first aid button at top.

At the process it said something about paused encryption and expanding partition. At that point I realized the problem is solved. I restarted the mac regularly and then I saw encrypting instead of paused. after the finished process I was able to install el captain and I was able to get rid of this paused encryption problem.

I am glad that worked for you

Did you ever figure out a solution to this? My terminal log shows pretty much the exact same thing... The drive appears to be non-revertible.

Thank you so much for suggesting this fix. It worked flawlessly for me. I had been stuck with an unresponsive FileVault for almost 9 months until this post. Successfully upgraded to El Capitan as well.

You have my absolute gratitude, buddy!

I ran into this same problem after installing El Capitan on a blank SSD on my Mac Mini. I enabled FileVault, restarted, and it stayed stuck at "encryption paused" no matter what I did. I tried resetting the PRAM, running First Aid on the unlocked partition, reinstalling OSX--everything suggested in this thread. After several days of trying, I finally had the thought that the UPS might be the problem, since OSX will pause the encryption based on the power source (usually this would only affect laptops, but there's clearly a bug in El Capitan). I unplugged the USB connection to the UPS, restarted and sure enough, the encryption process finally started. So for anybody that runs into this problem on a desktop connected to a UPS, try disconnecting the data cable and restarting--even if it doesn't say anything about connecting to a power source.

This worked for me as well.

A small note: once you reboot with your USB in, you need to first select the option to Install El Capitan in order to be able to unlock your disk (at least that's what I had to do). Once you've done that, don't wait for the install procedure to end (it won't) but rather click back, go back to selecting Disk Utility and then run First Aid on your volume (usually "Macintosh HD", I guess).

In my case, one of the logs from First Aid said "The volume xyz was resized to unblock Paused encryption". First Aid ran for less than 5 minutes on my SSD drive. Once done, quit everything and restart normally.

My filevault was stuck at the end of the encryption process, so after the second restart, I checked its status, unlocked Filevault's setting page, it took about 30 seconds to calculate the estimate time remaining, it then said "8 minutes" and after a couple of seconds :-) it actually finished the encryption. I got about 30 painful seconds of spinning beachball, then all went back to normal.