Encrypting external HD...estimated 1 month total time

[4004786]

Hey there. I have two external HDs, and I noticed what seems to be a new option to encrypt them without needing to wipe them. I thought, sure, why not, and started to encrypt them. It's been about a week, and one is at 27% and the other 21%, meaning the total time to encrypt these will be one month. That seems crazy, right?

My (relevant) setup is:

Late 2015 27" iMac
4GHz Intel Core i7

One of the drives is 1TB, and the other is 2TB.

This seems super slow, right? At this rate, I'd rather cancel the operation, as I'm worried about the life of the drives being affected by a 24/7 one month long operation.

What do folks think? Is this weird? Is there something I can do to speed things up? Is there a way to easily reverse this, or is there any issue with keeping them partially encrypted?

 

[Fishrrman]

Don't bother.
Don't waste your time.
If you have anything on it that's "that valuable" or that you don't want others to see, lock it in a safe.

 

[chabig]

I know Fishrrman doesn't trust encryption. I and many others do. Will it harm your drive--absolutely not.

 

[Weaselboy]

What do folks think? Is this weird? Is there something I can do to speed things up? Is there a way to easily reverse this, or is there any issue with keeping them partially encrypted?

It just takes time when there is a lot of data on the drive. Just wait it out, it won't hurt anything.

What you can do if you want is copy the data to another drive, then format the drive to the encrypted format (that takes just a few seconds), then copy the data back to the drive.