FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

I'm in the same situation. But when it gives an estimate of time to encryption completion, it's 341 days. Meanwhile my Macbook Air is running hotter than it ever has and the fans never shuts off. This all seemed surprising to Apple when I talked to technical support today. Neither did he have any answers. Now I can't shut off File Vault. On the other hand, the MBA seems to be operating fairly normally, if hot. Argh. 341 days to encrypt?

Talked to tech support advisor this morning who verified that, yes, FileVault is not working properly but suggested I give the Air about 6 hours to run in order to see if FileVault is actually encrypting the drive.

6 hours later (after running *with the power cord plugged in*), the Air still says encryption is paused until the power cord is plugged in. Sigh.

According to the advisor, the next step may be a restore from Time Machine but I'd like to speak to the tech before tackling that. Due to time differences, the tech support I spoke to is off duty & now I'm on hold with the Apple general tech support number. Adding to the urgency is the fact that I'm leaving on a 2-week trip tomorrow & wanted the (working) laptop with me. What a royal pain.

+1

Early 2011 MacBook Pro. 'Encryption Paused' although power adapter is plugged in.

- PRAM Reset no good

- SMC Reset no good

- 'sudo fdesetup disable' no good

- Turn Off Encryption via Disk Utility no good (both normal and recovery mode)

@apple: please fix asap

According to tech advisors I spent three hours on chat with last night, the only solution was to do a Internet recovery, erase the SDD (on my MBA), reinstall Mavericks from my back-up disk, then reinstall Yosemite AFTER CHECKING THAT FILEVAULT WAS NOT LEFT AS THE DEFAULT. It took all night and a few hours this morning, but around noon Yosemite was running and the cursed FileVault wasn't.

In my case, it hung and then came up with a random number for the time encryption would be complete. Numbers were weird, varying from a couple days to as many as 600 and changing every few minutes. On top of that, encryption began heating up my machine so the fan kept going. Like everyone else, I found there was no way out of FileVault until the encryption was complete and so long as encryption couldn't complete, it kept going. Catch 22.

The two tech advisors, and the two sr. advisors I had to deal with to get some solution ⚠ were unanimously skeptical about FileVault being of much value to anyone not acutely worried about someone stealing data on a machine and advised against using it at all. And all said they thought it was a mistake by Apple to make FileVault on by default in installing Yosemite.

@assignment: hudge workaround😉

FYI, what I've tried with NO SUCCESS:

- I've run Disk Utility : Verify Permission + Repair + Verify Disk + Repair Disk: error found so :

- Booting using the cmd+R then Disk Utility : Verify Permission + Repair + Verify Disk + Repair Disk : no more error on my disk

- Then I restarted and ...... still the message on filevault : need to plug power cord ...blabla.... 😟 no success

- Finally, I've tried to re-install Yosemite (using cmd+R when restarting)

=> no SUCCESS too 😟

unfortunately, Since I don't have a maverick backup, I have to wait a fix by Apple

a.

From a terminal session I did "

sudo 

fdesetup disable

" this turned off FileVault and started the decryption process.  I am seeing some increased responsiveness.  I can actually see letters as I type them.  5 hours of decryption to go.  Apple never should have turned the default to FileVault to ON.  

Thank you, Scafede. I followed your instructions and they worked perfectly.

When I chatted with Apple tech support yesterday, their only proposed solution was restoring the hard drive from a Mavericks backup and then reinstalling Yosemite, something I was unwilling to do. I hope they read this forum and take note of your fast, relatively simple remedy for this serious flaw in Yosemite 10.10.

Once again, thank you for your help.

Federico fixed worked 100% for me! Cannot believe apple tech support did not know how to do this. I am glad I did not go the restore route.

My encryption finally finished (like 20 hours on a 768 GB mid-2012 macbook pro).

Now I am wondering if I should keep encryption on and if hurts performance at all.

Just to echo everyone else, Scafede / Federico's solution worked for me as well! Thank you!

At first, I couldn't get it to work. However, when I went straight into booting into the disk utility after resetting the PRAM, it worked! I think this combination of events is the key because at first I reset the PRAM, booted up, and restarted again to the disk utility and this didn't solve it. Again, after resetting the PRAM immediately hold down command R to boot into disk utility and follow the rest of his instructions.

+1

Early 2011 MacBook Pro. 'Encryption Paused' although power adapter is plugged in.

- PRAM Reset no good

- SMC Reset no good

- 'sudo fdesetup disable' no good

- Turn Off Encryption via Disk Utility no good status bar shows 70 days left

@apple: please fix asap

I'm seeing the same problem on one of the MacBook Pro's I manage. We unfortunately didn't see these problem reports before turning on FileVault and it looks like we're out of luck. Apple really dropped the ball on the file system upgrade, core storage logical volume groups and specially the tools needed to manage these features. It looks like a rushed alpha or pre-beta release.

And now... to waste a few hours recovering the data from an old backup. 😟

Hi im having this trouble with my Mid 2010 15" Macbook Pro after upgrading to Yosemite my macbook pro has been really slow. FileVault is encrypting and ive been reading your posts. Ive tried Scafede´s solution but im afraid ive made a mess or something.

fdesetup status

FileVault is Off.

Decryption in progress: Percent completed = 52.37

sudo fdesetup enable

Password:

Error: FileVault is Off, but is busy reverting.

This is what it tells me when im messing with the terminal and here is the Etre Check

EtreCheck version: 2.0.6 (91)

Report generated 26 Oct 2014 23:47:04 GMT

Hardware Information: ℹ️

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) (Verified)

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro6,2

1 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Video Information: ℹ️

Intel HD Graphics - VRAM: 288 MB

Color LCD 1440 x 900

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M - VRAM: 512 MB

System Software: ℹ️

OS X 10.10 (14A389) - Uptime: 0:49:21

Disk Information: ℹ️

Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02 disk0 : (500,11 GB)

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

Macintosh HD (disk1) / [Startup]: 498.88 GB (288.72 GB free)

Core Storage: disk0s2 499.25 GB Online

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898

USB Information: ℹ️

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Internal Memory Card Reader

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Inc. Built-in iSight

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Configuration files: ℹ️

/etc/hosts - Count: 47

Gatekeeper: ℹ️

Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions: ℹ️

/System/Library/Extensions

[not loaded] com.squirrels.airparrot.framebuffer (3 - SDK 10.8) Support

Startup Items: ℹ️

Qmaster: Path: /Library/StartupItems/Qmaster

Startup items are obsolete and will not work in future versions of OS X

Launch Agents: ℹ️

[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support

[loaded] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist Support

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support

Launch Daemons: ℹ️

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support

[invalid?] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist Support

[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist Support

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2.Agent.plist Support

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support

User Launch Agents: ℹ️

[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support

[loaded] com.divx.agent.postinstall.plist Support

[loaded] com.facebook.videochat.[redacted].plist Support

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.diskSpaceWatcher.plist Support

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.scheduledScan.plist Support

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.trashWatcher.plist Support

[running] com.spotify.webhelper.plist Support

User Login Items: ℹ️

gfxCardStatus Application (/Users/[redacted]/Downloads/gfxCardStatus.app)

SpeechSynthesisServer Application (/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks /SpeechSynthesis.framework/Versions/A/SpeechSynthesisServer.app)

uTorrent Application (/Applications/uTorrent.app)

Dropbox Application (/Applications/Dropbox.app)

Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️

o1dbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support

Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 6.0 Support

Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.4.1.4 Support

OVSHelper: Version: 1.1 Support

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 10.1.7 Support

FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 15.0.0.189 - SDK 10.6 Support

DivXBrowserPlugin: Version: 2.2 Support

Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 Support

Flash Player: Version: 15.0.0.189 - SDK 10.6 Support

iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.8

googletalkbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.7 Support

SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.1.3 - SDK 10.6 Support

JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 15.0.0 - SDK 10.10 Check version

Safari Extensions: ℹ️

FastestTube

Less IMDb

DivX Plus Web Player HTML5 <video>

Audio Plug-ins: ℹ️

DVCPROHDAudio: Version: 1.3

3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️

DivX Support

Flash Player Support

Flip4Mac WMV Support

Growl Support

Time Machine: ℹ️

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️

11% firefox

5% com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice

1% WindowServer

1% mds_stores

1% Dock

Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️

471 MB firefox

94 MB WindowServer

90 MB Finder

77 MB Dropbox

60 MB mds_stores

Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️

896 MB Free RAM

1.71 GB Active RAM

711 MB Inactive RAM

841 MB Wired RAM

1.34 GB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs

What can i do?

Same problem, get this though, on an iMac 5K.

Power went out while FileVault was running and I have a UPS. Now it's stuck with the "Connect power adapter to resume encryption"

I tried resetting the PRAM (let it to do it twice). Then tried repairing permissions and the disk. It said the disk was fine, but it fixed a few permissions.

Rebooted and the power adapter message appeared again.

Ok I hope I don't jinx myself here, but it seems to be working now. Right now it says "Optimizing..." (with the time remaining constantly changing, probably due to my continued use of the system)

I did this:

Unplugged the USB cable going to the UPS

Rebooted resetting PRAM (cmd+option+p+r and waiting for 2 boot sounds)

Immediately held down cmd+r to boot to the restore partition

Went to Disk Utility and unlocked the drive (right-click on Macintosh HD)

Now I ran Repair Disk on the full disk (the top most Macintosh HD), not just the single partition.

Once that finished I Repaired Permissions and Repaired Disk on the Macintosh HD partition (the second Macintosh HD)

Then I rebooted and got to where I am now.

Best of luck all.

I have the exact same issue but my MBP (late 2012) retina seems to work fine...but I want to get rid of FileVault as soon as I can... The only reason I did this was a stupid feeling that it would be "better and safer" for my laptop...whew...NOT.

Now I'm afraid to keep trying to solve the problem as it seems many of you have had it go from bad to worse.

The thing that tipped me off is that I was unable to set to auto login. I have always used auto logon when I'm home and password logon when I travel...

What a mess. Guess I'll back up and go to genius bar

Tom