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external hard drive with encryption doesn't work as a startup disk

Does anyone else have this problem? I have a new 2018 MacBook Pro with the T2 chip. I have created a bootable backup on an external drive with a recovery HD. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to do this. I also changed my security settings to allow booting up from an external drive.


If I don't turn on encryption, I am able to boot up from this external backup drive. But if I boot up from it, go into system preferences and turn file vault on for the external drive, it will no longer be able to boot up. I get a message saying that the software needs to be updated, I hit update and it goes through the update process and then I get the message again. It goes into this loop.

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Jul 27, 2018 8:47 AM

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Posted on Aug 7, 2018 4:15 AM

So it seems that this may be a bug with Apple. It doesn't work with HFS+ formatted disks. I had to reformat with APFS and no encryption, then boot from the backup and then turn on encryption through system preferences. I think it also doesn't work if you format with APFS with encryption. Support at Carbon Copy Cloner didn't think it was worth reporting it as a bug to Apple, this is what they said, "Because I was able to reproduce this with the macOS Installer, I considered filing a bug with Apple against this firmware issue. However, HFS+ is deprecated, and I think Apple is going to start recommending APFS for rotational disks, so they may not have any interest in resolving the issue if it's specific to HFS+."

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Question marked as Best reply

Aug 7, 2018 4:15 AM in response to Scott Raymond

So it seems that this may be a bug with Apple. It doesn't work with HFS+ formatted disks. I had to reformat with APFS and no encryption, then boot from the backup and then turn on encryption through system preferences. I think it also doesn't work if you format with APFS with encryption. Support at Carbon Copy Cloner didn't think it was worth reporting it as a bug to Apple, this is what they said, "Because I was able to reproduce this with the macOS Installer, I considered filing a bug with Apple against this firmware issue. However, HFS+ is deprecated, and I think Apple is going to start recommending APFS for rotational disks, so they may not have any interest in resolving the issue if it's specific to HFS+."

Jul 27, 2018 11:58 AM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for that reply but I already had that link and did all of those steps and I have been in contact with their customer support. So what is happening is when I go through all of those steps, I am able to boot from the external drive after the backup is created and I create the recovery HD. The problem is when booted from the external drive and going into the system preferences and turning on file vault for the external drive. It then requires a reboot and that is where it gets stuck. As soon as the encryption is on, the external drive can no longer boot. I have tried this whole process with two different drives now.

external hard drive with encryption doesn't work as a startup disk

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