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How To Delete/Erase an Encrypted Partition

ghsDUDE

ghsDUDE

macrumors 68030
Original poster
May 25, 2010
2,949
763
Hi Guys!

I recently tried erasing my external hard drive because I need to partition it to hold additional information.

I encrypted my Time Machine portion and now it won't let me unmount or erase in Disk Utility.

Can someone please help me delete this? It's been "decrypting" forever.
 
https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/erasing-a-filevault-2-encrypted-volume/
ghsNick said:
Hi Guys!

I recently tried erasing my external hard drive because I need to partition it to hold additional information.

I encrypted my Time Machine portion and now it won't let me unmount or erase in Disk Utility.

Can someone please help me delete this? It's been "decrypting" forever.
Click to expand...

I've ran into that before. Disk Utility program is too "over protective" of encrypted partitions. I think it's unnecessary but for now it is what it is. In the past the only solution I found, other than waiting on full decryption, is to delete the partition using diskutil at the command line. Of course, backup any data you need to keep.

Here's instructions:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/erasing-a-filevault-2-encrypted-volume/

BTW, this is an easy no-fuss way to quickly destroy any core storage volume.
 
Just run the command below in Terminal and substitute the name of the external volume you want to nuke. Be sure to include the quotes.

Code: 
diskutil cs delete "name_of_drive"
 
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