File Vault Will Lock You Out and Decrypt Itself

[beskeptical]

File Vault is utterly defective. It suddenly wouldn't accept my password, prompted me to restart in recovery mode as the only option, upon which I entered my password (which it accepted, proving I knew it just fine), then DECRYPTED MY ENTIRE HARD DRIVE WITHOUT PERMISSION OR ANY ABILITY TO STOP THE PROCESS.

(For those who may think caps lock was stuck: I tried the PW repeatedly toggling the caps lock button, which -- as a result of another Apple glitch -- does not light up on the keyboard when logged out and using File Vault, so you can't tell whether it's engaged or not.

 

[BetaVirus]

Not that this is part of your problem, but I always re-start prior to doing any disk / data related maintenance. Just eliminates any chance that some running program interferes with the process.

 

[chscag]

You lucked out. At least FileVault decrypted your entire hard drive so that you now have access to your data. That should be a valuable lesson learned. Most of the time when FileVault goes haywire or your hard drive becomes faulty, the encryption process will lock you out permanently with no way to recover. Unless you absolutely need it, our advice is to avoid FileVault or the newer FileVault 2. And, make sure you faithfully backup your data.

 

[harryb2448]

And by avoiding it, chscag means avoiding like the very plague! Powerful black magic FileVault and FV2.