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FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

After upgrading my MPB to Yosemite, I elected to turn on FileVault. In the Security & Privacy panel of System Preferences, the status shows "Encryption paused" and the text under the progress bar reads, "Connect power adapter to resume encryption." Trouble is, I am running from the power adapter!


I have rebooted and tried another power adapter. The battery icon in the menu bar correctly changes from battery to power adapter as I connect and disconnect. However, the encryption status never changes. I have left the machine running overnight with no change.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 7:25 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 21, 2017 6:53 AM

Hello,

I have Sierrra. Enabled filevault and it got stuck.


Solution
:Open Terminal -> type: " sudo fdesetup disable " then paste your password or recovery keyword.


I pasted my recovery keyword and voila it worked again and the process was finished in a few hours :-D


Yay! 🙂


Thank me later 😉

348 replies

Oct 20, 2014 6:16 AM in response to loicsans

Same issues with no resolutions. Was on the phone with Apple multiple times and they are looking into it. Unfortunately waiting does not work for me and I ended up backing up the drive, reformatted it and re-installed Yosemite (without filevault) since I didn't see the sudo command tips.


FYI, the process will pause under 2 conditions. 1) running on battery and 2) when booted into safe mode. The safe mode boot halts the encryption process and allows you to backup and copy files,


Best to all, no filevault for me.

Oct 20, 2014 4:19 PM in response to Shaylee Greene

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?

Oct 20, 2014 5:42 PM in response to Assignment

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.

Oct 21, 2014 4:46 PM in response to felipe23

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.

Oct 22, 2014 1:49 AM in response to Assignment

@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.

Oct 22, 2014 4:38 AM in response to bertofromparis

Hi,

same problem, i've try the command in terminal but no way

i've resolved the issued doing this:

restarting my mac book pro ssd 500gb

reset pram with option+cmd+p+r

booting with cmd+r the utility disc (i've macintosh hd and one partition encrypted (the one with encoding paused)) >select the partition encrypted>click file and unlock>repair the partition disk>repair permission on partition>repair macintosh hd

restar

the encryption was resumed, after almost 9 hour the encryption ended.


Hope this can help you.

Federico

FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

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