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Doc69

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 21, 2005
648
85
All my data hard drives, both internal and external on my MacPro5,1, are MacOS encrypted. Will I be able to just convert them from Mac OS Extended to APFS, or will I need to format and erase them?

Also, is it advisable to convert all my data drives to APFS, including backup drives?
 

mikecwest

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2013
1,193
496
I think, unless it has changed, you have to unencrypt the drive, convert to APFS, then re-encrypt them. It is a VERY lengthy process, and slow, especially if you are using a spinning hard drive.
 

Khashoggi

macrumors member
Oct 10, 2007
47
26
You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Same password requirements during boot.

This was as of a beta 8 install.
 

mikecwest

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2013
1,193
496
You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Same password requirements during boot.

This was as of a beta 8 install.

Oh, in the initial beta of High Sierra you did have to....That is nice if it is no longer required.
 

Doc69

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 21, 2005
648
85
You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Thanks. However, I would appreciate if someone could confirm if this is also the case for internal and external non-OS drives. A have three new 8TB drives that I need to encrypt, but since that process takes a few days for each drive, if I have to unencrypt them before converting to APFS, then I'll postpone the encryption until after I have upgraded to High Sierra.
 

ZapNZs

macrumors 68020
Jan 23, 2017
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Last edited:
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nutmac

macrumors 603
Mar 30, 2004
6,167
7,672
APFS Encrypted with FileVault is very unstable. Upgrade from beta 7 to beta 8 borked my MacBook Pro. So I did a clean install and while everything is seemingly fine, fsck is reporting issues, FileVault status is reporting issues, and Disk Utility locks up.
 

LarryJoe33

macrumors 68030
Jul 17, 2017
2,641
1,124
Boston
I would not convert backup drives to APFS. I would leave them HFS. More flexibility and compatibility options when you need to restore.
 

lederermc

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2014
897
756
Seattle
All my data hard drives, both internal and external on my MacPro5,1, are MacOS encrypted. Will I be able to just convert them from Mac OS Extended to APFS, or will I need to format and erase them?

Also, is it advisable to convert all my data drives to APFS, including backup drives?
I installed High Sierra on a late 2013 MacBookPro(r) with file vault2 encryption without any issues. No need to unencrypted the encrypt.
 
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