How do I unencrypt the hardrive?

[kevs1]

I did a right click and encrypted a hard drive. But when I right click to unencrypt all I see is (greyed out), "encrypting hardrive...". Any ideas. thanks!

 

[Erdbeertorte]

I have done this several times and never found out where I can see the progress like when disabling FileVault for the system partition, but you'll see that it's finished when encrypting is not greyed out anymore.

 

[kevs1]

Thanks V, I did not use filevault or even go into system prefs. I just encrypted with right click method yesterday. And it is encrypted, was encrypted last night, but then how to en encrypt?

 

[chabig]

I did a right click and encrypted a hard drive. But when I right click to unencrypt all I see is (greyed out), "encrypting hardrive...". Any ideas. thanks!

That's a known OS X bug. The menu title you see is wrong. Once you begin the decryption it should say "Decrypting hard drive" but instead it tells you it's encrypting. Just wait until it's done and your drive will be fully decrypted.

If you never selected "Decrypt hard drive" and it still shows encrypting, then you need to wait for the encryption to finish before you can decrypt it. Encryption can take many hours or even a few days depending upon your hard drive capacity.

To see the status of your encryption progress, type "diskutil cs list" in terminal. See http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/60683/how-to-view-progress-when-encrypting-a-disk#60729

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Exactly. You just have to wait until encryption is available again. The decryption is already in progress.

It's really annoying because you don't know how much time is left until it is finished. But you can even turn off your Mac in the meanwhile and it continues to decrypt after turning it on again.

 

[kevs1]

Thanks guys, I though encrypting the hardrive (external), is just a 2 min thing. One was done a few weeks ago, and the other yesterday. I assume it worked because, when I plug in the hardrive, it ask for a password, so it's done no? Are we on the same page?

How can is still be encrypting when it's asking for a password to mount? It's done! It achieved what I wanted.

When I make a disc or sparse image with encryption that take one minute. I'm lost....

 

[997440]

Thanks guys, I though encrypting the hardrive (external), is just a 2 min thing. One was done a few weeks ago, and the other yesterday. I assume it worked because, when I plug in the hardrive, it ask for a password, so it's done no? Are we on the same page?

How can is still be encrypting when it's asking for a password to mount? It's done! It achieved what I wanted.

When I make a disc or sparse image with encryption that take one minute. I'm lost....

It's possible that an encrypt process hasn't completed (power downs, etc.) but still asks for a password to protect what has been encrypted.

Use the terminal command @chabig posted in #4 to see the process status.

 

[NoBoMac]

Re: time to encrypt, apples vs oranges. Sparse or disc image is most likely not many GB large. With physical media, you have SATA/2/3 vs USB2/3, SSD vs spinning discs. Throw In capacity as well, and if SSD, quality of SSD/controller.

Example: it took 7.5 hrs to encrypt 250GB internal drive over SATA (no 2 or 3) in my Mac. When I replaced with an SSD (same size), took about 2.5 hours. So even with a relatively fast bus and "small" capacity, it takes some time.

 

[kevs1]

Thanks guys, did the terminal got this for both parittions. One partition is 3 TB of data, the other is 30 GB of data and the boot volume.


Encryption Type: AES-XTS
Encryption Status: Unlocked
Conversion Status: Converting (forward)
High Level Queries: Not Fully Secure
| Passphrase Required
| Accepts New Users
| Has Visible Users
| Has Volume Key


Still, confused: well one drive I thought was done has 3 TB of data normal platter drive! The other is 500 SDD.
This would take weeks...

Still puzzled, all I care about is that if someone finds the drive offsite they can't get it, they need a password which has been accomplished...

This whole thing came up becuase the new one, from last night has a boot volume, and when I try to boot into it, I get the ? updating symbol (which did not happen for the one done two weeks ago)

But essentially neither are done?

 

[Erdbeertorte]

And of course it depends on how much data is on that drive. Encrypting or decrypting an empty drive just takes a few seconds even if it's 10 TB. There is not much difference in formatting an empty drive with Disk Utility normally or encrypted.

When I activate FileVault directly after a clean install of OS X it's maybe 20 minutes, but when the drive is fully loaded with data and very big it could take the whole day or even longer.

You don't recognize a real difference in time by putting data on an already encrypted drive because the whole file system is different and not every single file has to be encrypted.

But that does not work the other way round unless you format the drive unencrypted with losing all data on it.

 

[kevs1]

It's a 5 TB drive, with one partition 4.5 TB,at 2.5 TB data, other partition is 500 GB with 300GB data (and OS).

But if the 4.5 partition requires now a password, what does it matter it it finished or not? That's all I care about that the thief cannot see anything as he need to do the password?

I did not understand this sorry:
"
You don't recognize a real difference in time by putting data on an already encrypted drive because the whole file system is different and not every single file has to be encrypted.

But that does not work the other way round unless you format the drive unencrypted with losing all data on it.
"