I accidentally started decrypting my empty 5tb external hard drive because the encrypted drive won't show password hint

[joyagirl]

I bought a new 5tb Seagate external drive and encrypted it with Disk Utility with a "passowrd hint" on my 2019 Macbook Pro (Catalina). The drive has never been used and is empty. However, the password hint did not show when I plugged it back in, so I thought maybe I should redo the encrytion. I thought I'd need to decrypt it first before encryting it again with a password hint. I clicked on "decrypt" via Finder and then immediately regretted it.

I need to pack up my Macbook Pro shortly so I need to eject the drive before I leave. How can I abort the decryption and eject the drive? Will I ruin the drive by encrypting, decrypting and encrypting again? All I want is for the new drive to have a password and show password hint

ps: I managed to erase the drive when it was still decrypting. Tried encrypting with password hint again on three different Macs (Catalina, High Sierra, Mojave) but still the password hint won't show. When I erase/encrypted using Disk Utility on Mountain Lion, the password hint would show afterwards. How can I get passwrod hint to show after encrypting using "OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"?

 

[Apple_Robert]

More than likely, you will need to wait for it to finish decrypting, even though there is no data.

 

[joyagirl]

Disk Utility just let me erase the drive while it was still decrypting. Is that dangerous?! I erase/encrypted again but the the password hint doesn't show. Then I erased andencrypted for a 3rd time on a Macbook Air running Mojave, still passowrd hint didn't show. Maybe it's a bug with Catalina and Mojave as I never had this problem with Mountain Lion?

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Curious what your outcome was, with this process...

 

[KALLT]

Encrypting/decrypting is a process that turns bits into different bits, essentially just writing new data to the drive. I do not see any problems with erasing the drive before that process is completed.

I do not know why the password hint is not showing, but from what I can find online (here and here) it seems that this functionality does exist for APFS-formatted volumes (which is standard since macOS High Sierra). Any reason why you are choosing HFS+ (OS Extended)?

 

[chabig]

the password hint doesn't show

The hint doesn't show until you enter a wrong password three times.