External Hard drive "Decrypting...."

[timesign]

Greetings - Thanks in advance for trying to assist. I am getting an error using my external hard drives with Time Machine (OS High Sierra.) A bit more background:

- Recently installed a clean version of High Sierra (previously using Yosemite or Mavericks).
- I have a number of encrypted HFS+ external hard drives that I had set up under the prior operating system. These hard drives have both data and prior time machine backups.
- Good news: Upon attaching any of these drives, I supply the password and can access all the folders in Finder.
- Bad News: In Time Machine I attempt to select an attached drive as a back up disk. In the selection box I will see the name of the disk, the available size, and the word "Decrypting". When I select the disk it asks me for the password to turn off encryption. Once I supply I get an error stating "There was an error preparing the Time Machine backup disk 'Disk name'. This Core Storage logical volume is already decrypting."
- Additional: In finder I right click on the external disk and there is a greyed out section that says "Decrypting 'Disk Name-...'" which presumably is preventing me from selecting other disk options and also seems to be indicating that the OS is trying to do something with the disk, even though I can access them.

What I've tried:
- Can't find a way to convert the disk to non encrypted and then encrypt back (Only option is APFS)
- Don't know why the disk immediately attempts to "decrypt" upon mounting? If not mounted Time Machine can not find it.
- Given that the Hard drives all have contents and backups and can be used for every purpose other than time machine, trying to avoid formatting them.

Thoughts?

Thanks so much!

 

[harryb2448]

G'day band welcome to the forums.

I t ake it the internal hard drive is an SSD as you have upgraded to High Sierra? You have mot told us about your Mac model. They will need to be to format them as APFS also. Have a read of this link which advises using Disk Utility on the externals, platter or SSD:-


https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops...t-to-convert-your-external-drives-to-apfs-too

 

[timesign]

G'day band welcome to the forums.

I t ake it the internal hard drive is an SSD as you have upgraded to High Sierra? You have mot told us about your Mac model. They will need to be to format them as APFS also. Have a read of this link which advises using Disk Utility on the externals, platter or SSD:-


https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops...t-to-convert-your-external-drives-to-apfs-too

Thanks for the quick reply. To answer your question, the MAC is a MacBook Air, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD. External hard drives are physical (not SSD). Not sure if there is anything else you need

Article is helpful. So to clarify:
- When I switched to High Sierra I understand that my file system moved over to APFS.
- I'm implying from your comment and the article that while High Sierra will be able to access HFS+ encrypted, there are certain things it can not do with an HFS+ drive, such as utilize Time Machine? The article does not explicitly state this but if I follow correctly focuses more on the benefit rather than lack of functionality. ("Converting your external drives to APFS will give you all the same benefits you get from converting your main drive and will mean faster copying and duplication, better partition management, and native encryption, amongst other things.")
- Did not want to upgrade those external drives to APFS because that will lock me into using them only with High Seirra or future versions but it sounds like that is the decision I need to make if I want to use Time Machine?


Did I get that right?

 

[MacInWin]

TM can and will use HFS+ drives just fine, but I have read that if you ask for encryption, it will convert the external drive to APFS. That seems to be non-optional. So your choice is unencrypted HFS+ TM backups, or APFS TM Backups encrypted.

 

[timesign]

TM can and will use HFS+ drives just fine, but I have read that if you ask for encryption, it will convert the external drive to APFS. That seems to be non-optional. So your choice is unencrypted HFS+ TM backups, or APFS TM Backups encrypted.

Helpful @MacInWin . If my drive is already encrypted, is there a way on my computer to convert to HFS+ non encrypted. Don't see that as an option now that I'm in High Sierra.

Thanks!

 

[MacInWin]

Going back to HFS+ from APFS requires a reformat, so the only way I know is to decrypt the drive, copy everything to a different drive then use Disk Utility to reformat the APFS drive and copy back the data. PITA.

 

[IWT]

@timesign

I’m on holiday at the moment and therefore away from my iMac which contains most of my useful links.

Given the short time left to us, may I suggest you click on my name IWT and look at my posts from the last week. I posted three links - two relating to the use of TM and how it will not work with an APFS format - and the third one was how you could transfer your TM backups to an HFS+ formatted drive.

I’m really sorry to be so vague in my reply, but I have very limited WiFi where I am and I’m using my iPad Pro in a library with poor signal

I can tell you that it you Google Time Machine and APFS, it will bring up a load of articles. That’s how I researched it.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

I can tell you that it you Google Time Machine and APFS, it will bring up a load of articles. That’s how I researched it.

And a call to Apple Support if needed.

Or a good Mac Tech.




- Patrick
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