Resolved External drive encryption

[MarkC426]

I recently formatted an external spinner with 4 partitions to clone various drives on my Mac Pro for offsite storage.
In retrospect, I would have preferred them to be encrypted (personal paranoia....🙄), if leaving at work.

Reading the Apple support docs suggests to erase with Disk Utility as encrypted.
All volumes have already been cloned (some took quite a while), so was trying to avoid re-cloning.
But then further it says you can select in finder and encrypt....

This disk is in HFS+, so presume will be converted to APFS (Mojave).

Question is can I do the whole disk at once from finder, or do you need to select each volume (and maybe give different pw...)

 

[chabig]

You'll have to encrypt each volume separately, and the volume format will remain HFS+. To do it, just right click on each drive and select "Encrypt". It will take some time, maybe even days, but let it run to completion.

 

[MarkC426]

You'll have to encrypt each volume separately, and the volume format will remain HFS+. To do it, just right click on each drive and select "Encrypt". It will take some time, maybe even days, but let it run to completion.

If it's going to take days....it may be quicker to reformat as encrypted using DU.
Then redo the clones with SuperDuper.

edit: in retrospect, I don't think this process will work.
All my clones are done with SD. Subsequent clones are 'smart updates' (i.e. only what's changed).
All source drives are NOT encrypted, so cloning to an encrypted volume probably will not work, surely they need to be the same format....?

 

[mattspace]

If it's going to take days....it may be quicker to reformat as encrypted using DU.
Then redo the clones with SuperDuper.

edit: in retrospect, I don't think this process will work.
All my clones are done with SD. Subsequent clones are 'smart updates' (i.e. only what's changed).
All source drives are NOT encrypted, so cloning to an encrypted volume probably will not work, surely they need to be the same format....?

I've copied HFS+ Time Machine volumes from unencrypted volumes, to encrypted volumes - ie that were encrypted while empty, THEN made into Time Machine targets, using SuperDuper. As far as I can tell, the encryption is mount / unmount based. Once the drive is unlocked and mounted, the data itself behaves like a non-encrypted drive.

Dave is active and responds on Mastodon if you wanted to ask him.

 

[MarkC426]

I have started the first volume...
Is there anywhere that shows progress?

 

[chabig]

In Terminal, type "diskutil cs list"

 

[MarkC426]

Ok I gave up on this....
After 2 hours 35% of 60GB was encrypted........and my other drive is an almost full 4TB

Working this out [10gb/hr = 100gb/10hrs = 1tb/100hrs = 4TB/400hrs].....🤣
That's approx 16 days continuous...I don't think so.

I have reformatted to APFS and redone my SD clone as normal (60GB data in 12 minutes)
Thanks for everyone's help though..😀

 

[MarkC426]

Revisiting this…..
I reformatted my external to APFS encrypted, but then when I run SD it erases it to just APFS.
So it finishes as un-encrypted, and there is not an option to encrypt it when right clicking….🤔
The other container (which is just data from another drive does have the option to encrypt).

Is this because it is a boot volume, and you need to use Filevault..?

 

[chabig]

I reformatted my external to APFS encrypted, but then when I run SD it erases it to just APFS.

Superduper is only formatting the drive because your "During copy" option is set to erase then copy. If you change that to Smart update, it won't reformat the drive.

 

[MarkC426]

Superduper is only formatting the drive because your "During copy" option is set to erase then copy. If you change that to Smart update, it won't reformat the drive.

Problem is you need to do a full copy first before you can do a smart update.
It is now back to a full copy (APFS only), so if I do a smart update it will still be non-encrypted.

I thought maybe it would be quicker to have an encrypted drive to start, rather than a conversion, but this doesn’t work with SD.

If I was just ‘drag n drop’ copying data it should work onto an encrypted drive.
But this is no good for a system drive….🤪

 

[chabig]

I’m not so sure you can’t begin with a Smart Update.

Nevertheless, you should be able to right-click on the volume in Finder and encrypt it.

 

[MarkC426]

I’m not so sure you can’t begin with a Smart Update.

Nevertheless, you should be able to right-click on the volume in Finder and encrypt it.

I have 2 containers on my drive, one is a copy of my boot drive, the other a copy of an external drive.
The boot clone doesn't show an encrypt option....

Plus when trying a retrospective encrypt of the data drive clone today, it was taking far far too long.
I havn't got the patience.....🤨