FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

Tom, gergant, or others...Can you take a quick look at my situation (11/16/14 10:09 am) and make a suggestion? I'm inclined to just leave things alone and move on, but I may be overlooking something. Thanks in advance for any insights you can provide.

I personally do not recommend to leave the system in an unclear state as such, if you have to rely on it. File system encryption is at the very foundation of your system and if it has "hick-ups" thats serious. If you have a backup of all your files all the time that may be ok for a while. Still you don't know whats happening in the background.

Regarding the performance issues - that you apparently don't have - take a look on your battery while not connected to power.

If you click on the battery sign, there are apps listet that consume a lot of power.

In my case I have an app listed there: "Revert from FireVault" that is apparently very hungry. While the UI still shows "Encryption paused", waiting for power.

I personally am on the road at the moment and have no access to my backups/external usb-drives, so I can not easily make a new installation without buying another usb-drive. Which I also am not willing to accept having spent some bucks for the mac book pro already. This bug is a bad joke.

I can just encourage everybody with this problem to

1. File the bug here: https://bugreport.apple.com/

2. Call Apple Care as they can not solve the problem and possibly realize its a bug.

Regarding reinstallation of Yosemite, what happens if the bug is returning at some point. I think there must be something wrong with FileVault. For me this bug occurred on a brand new, third party software free, mac book.

Well I can say that encryption ON is NOT an option for me ... Been though i all in these thread .. I did not have to reinstall, instead I WAITED ... Encryption took 3 days - then Optimizing took 8 days ... After that FileVault was on.... BUT .. system seemed SLOW. (Early MBP i7 2,2 with 16 g ram - AND Crucial 960gb SSD) Meassuring Disk performance resulted in 20-30 mb/s !!!!.. Ended turning FileVault OFF - that took another 2 days... When finally off disk performance was back @ 480-500 mb/s .... HUGE difference..

Don't know if this has to do with my SSD or the fact that Apple don't support 3rd party SSD anymore..

Thanks, gerjant. Regarding the "revert" message on the battery, I originally saw that message. I then followed the steps suggested by others--reset PRAM...immediate reboot with cmd R...checked for disk errors (none)...checked battery again and revert message was gone so nothing seems to be working in the background (or so it seems). Perhaps you might try these steps (again) if you still have the "revert" message. Hope this helps.

Gerjant-

I would turn file vault OFF and leave it off unless there is some major update to it and months of wide usage that causes no problems.

A clean install of Yosemite and reinstalling apps and data from Time Machine should erase any settings or system problems with file vault.

Tom

TMB80-

I agree with Gerant - I would take care of the problem now and be done with it. Things like this tend to go south when you can stand it least and although he is right that you can always recover later if you have good backups, I'm of the opinion that the longer you wait, the more complications creep into the situation so you are better off dealing with it and be able to stop worrying about it.

Depending on your backup speed and disk size, it will take you from 2-5 hours to do the complete backup (if you have 2 external drives, do a second one just for comfort - I have one with Time Machine and one with Super Duper). Then another hour or so to download and install Yosemite and then about the same amount of time the backup took to reinstall data. Actual time you need to spend is about 30 minutes, the rest is waiting time.

It really isn't that bad.

Cheers,

Tom

Tom/gerjant, thanks for the thorough and prompt reply. I'm going to think about this for a while before I proceed through your suggested steps. I have a moderate amount of computer experience, but it is all with PCs. This is my first exposure to OS X so I am concerned about unintended consequences if I take a major action. So I'm going to think for a while, and perhaps in the interim, someone will come up with a simple magic bullet (Ha!). again, thanks.

Just got my Mac Book Pro today and went through the Yosemite update turned on the file vault encryption process and got into the same problem, it paused even though power cord was plugged in ..... have not noticed any adverse effects to performance yet but this whole experience is annoying . Apple needs to supply a fix/patch/update whatever to restore my faith in this purchase. I'm going to take this Pro Book back to apple store and let them fix it .... I just bought about $7,000 worth of Apple products in the past 8 months .... they need to at least acknowledge this issue in this forum.

Fred-

this is a user group. It is not monitored by Apple employees.

Although this problem is real for all of us in this thread, it does not seem to be a really widespread problem. If you really want to Apple to get the message, you should either leave feedback or call AppleCare and tell them your feelings about Apple stepping in.

although it does sound like a windows solution, reinstalling Yosemite is probably the easiest way to solve it absent some sort of patchwork fix from Apple. In my opinion it's better to fix it now rather than wait since the solution really turns out to be a rather simple one… Though somewhat time-consuming.

Good luck,

Tom

I Have same problem with Mac Book Pro ... Just got off chat with Apple Support team ..here is the response

Hi Fred, I understand you appear to be having an issue with FileVault, as it turns out, it’s a cosmetic bug and the encryption is still going on int he background, our engineering team is aware of the issue and is working on a fix for it already.

THey told me to just keep it powered in ?? ...... Cosmetic ?? ...... I'm not showing any issues with degradation I'm going to schedule a call with the technical team tomorrow for further info ...... I would reload Yosemite but it takes ages to download via Satilite ..... Will update further

Fred, thanks. That's helpful news for me. I have been thinking my problem is "cosmetic" since I have not perceived performance problems, not even a draw on the battery. I have been reluctant to undertake a major re-install, partly because I don't have current problems and partly because I am new to OS X. Please let us know when you learn more. Thanks.

Was there for a long time, try the fix i used and see if it will work for you. If you really need to use you computer it will work in the safe mode.but if you choose to fix it, go to the recover mode and turn of the encryption after you ensure that the disk is verified and the permissions ok when you reboot it will decrypt and be back to normal with no lost of files as a matter of fact it seem to be working great look up my previous post. i am not sure I if this fix is as a result of the latest fix from apple which i had installed in safe mode or not some-one needs to tell me if they have the option without the fix. running ver 10.10.1

Sadly it got all the way down to 20 sec's of optimizing and then kicked back to the Encryption paused. Laptop was sitting on a table and There was no power outage.

So still trying something to fix mine.

Scafede solution worked for me.

I am on Macbook pro 13.3" with Retina Display bought last week (model MacbookPro 11,1).

I migrated just my Home directory and profile from a Mavericks Time Machine backup of my previous laptop, and left the default Filevault encryption option checked while the Migration assistant was setting up everything.

After a few hours, when the estimated time left was ~5 minutes I had to disconnect from power and put the machine to sleep, and when I woke it up and connected power again I got stuck with the "Encryption Paused/Connect to power".

After following Scafede procedure the countdown restarted and encrypting was finished in ~15 minutes. I have a 1TB disk with ~270 GB used, so I guess my encryption time is relatively short with respect to people with a fuller HD.